


The Fox's Grief

by nirejseki



Category: Original Work
Genre: Age Difference, Asthma, Bureaucracy, M/M, Murder, Mystery/Procedural, Politics, Rescue, Royalty, Secret Identity, vaguely ancient China
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-03
Updated: 2020-06-03
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:40:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 38,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24515545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nirejseki/pseuds/nirejseki
Summary: No one in their right mind would ever seriously try to woo Lin Ronghu, the Emperor's infamously ruthless (if unofficial) spymaster.Not that that's stopped the local legend, a (self-described) beautiful detective with peerless martial arts. His crush is a major inconvenience - at least until there's a murder that puts Lin Ronghu's most hated political nemesis straight in the frame. Since Lin Ronghu can't believe that anyone would be that stupid, he decides that maybe having a private detective around might be good for something after all...
Relationships: Beautiful Detective With Peerless Martial Arts/Frail Secret Spymaster He‘s Trying To Seduce, Lin Ronghu/Jing Fengchu
Comments: 140
Kudos: 349
Collections: Fandom 5K 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Prinzenhasserin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prinzenhasserin/gifts).



The fishmongers were fighting again.

Lin Ronghu, who had per his usual habit worked far too late again, reluctantly opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling, thinking once again that he might want to consider moving to another, better situated villa. One that _wouldn’t_ be perfectly positioned to hear and also smell the distinctive presence of the capital’s fish market.

After all, he was a court official, personally appointed by the Emperor to serve as a part of his six Ministries; he was rich, powerful, influential, even feared.

In short: there was no reason for him to wake up every morning in exactly the same way he had back when he’d been a nobody, a teacher of children barely scraping by in an impoverished riverside city full of fish and yelling fishmongers. Even that description was more flattery than truth; it was only in the last generation or two that his hometown had finally gotten too large to be treated as a simple water town like any other.

Even if he did stay here, in the cozy ill-placed villa he’d chosen out of some self-hating sense of nostalgia, he should at least move courtyards. Lin Ronghu might be an unfashionably old bachelor for the times, already over the age of thirty and lacking even a concubine, but that only meant that he had several courtyards available to use; there was no reason for him to use one of the smaller ones, located by the wall nearest to the fish market.

On the other hand, the division did mean he was able to shove all those gifts he’d received over the years – the elegant paintings, priceless porcelains, and glittering treasures that were more bribes than anything else – into the large courtyard he used on the rare occasions he was forced to entertain visitors. It made him appear gracious and receptive, while also allowing him to avoid smashing into them as he staggered around half-awake every morning.

It also helpfully confused the occasional assassin.

No, he wouldn’t move.

Having decided not to move and, after careful contemplation, concluded that his ceiling had not changed in the slightest from its appearance the night before, Lin Ronghu finally conceded that he had no reason not to get out of bed and begrudgingly set about making his morning ablutions. He’d never quite gotten into the habit of allowing his servants to help him as much as he knew other officials did – but then, he didn’t quite have the same relationship with them as others, either.

“Assistant Minister Lin!” one of his house servants (You Hua, his too-organized mind helpfully reminded him the way it always did: she was the better half of the middle-aged couple he’d hired as housekeepers, locally born, moderately reliable, two daughters safely married out, one son with a gambling problem now largely resolved) exclaimed, rushing over when he finally emerged into the main hall. “Assistant Minister, oh, you’re up so early again! And in this unseasonable wind – your lips are turning blue! Here, have something warm to drink…”

Lin Ronghu accepted the cup of warm broth with a small sigh. It was probably time to swap out his servants again – it was usually a bad sign when they started being nosy regarding his health. 

Lin Ronghu had an exceedingly economical arrangement with his servants: throughout their tenure, he would never pay them so much as a single penny, a fact he informed them of when he hired them. Instead, he permitted them to freely take bribes from his multitude of political enemies; it resulted in their receiving an income that far outstripped any of their peers, while simultaneously rendering them beholden to so many sources of outside income that the resulting web of conflicting loyalties generally made it easier to simply be loyal to him, instead.

All he asked in return was that they limit themselves to passively reporting information, rather than actively taking steps against him, and yet time and time again they decided to die for wealth as birds died for food...

“We recently received a gift of some thousand-year-old ginseng to help your health, Master Lin,” You Hua added, interrupting Lin Ronghu’s musings. She gestured, and two kitchen servants (Qiao Mei and Yi Li, daughters of two of You Hua’s friends, too young to have developed vices but working hard on it) stepped forward, carrying steaming bowls. “It’s been prepared already, and must be drunk soon, lest it go to waste. Would you like –”

“I’m going to the Ministry,” Lin Ronghu announced and stood, waving away his overly solicitous servants as he patiently endured the brief bout of dizziness he always felt upon moving too quickly. He wasn’t even slightly tempted by her offer, which if he accepted would almost certainly be followed by some sort of proposition by the person who had so generously given the ginseng and paid You Hua for the privilege of delivering it.

He wasn’t especially impressed with the tactic, either. Lin Ronghu was a well-known official in the imperial court notorious for his poor health, which meant he’d been awarded or gifted enough medicine over the years to cure an entire army. Unfortunately for him, he wasn’t actually sick, just born with a weak constitution diagnosed a thousand times over – bad lungs, weak kidney, unhealthy spleen, all conspiring to make it difficult to breathe – and this was something that anyone who worked for him really ought to have known by now.

“If you’ve already prepared it,” he added, “then give it to someone in the market outside who might benefit from it.”

“But..! Assistant Minister…!”

Lin Ronghu paid her no mind and headed out in his carriage.

Following tradition, the Emperor had three departments and six ministries, although nowadays the power had been thoroughly consolidated in the latter, leaving the former little more than a shell. Each ministry had its own role, although the relevance and power exerted by each varied by the strength of the political wind that backed them: the Ministry of Personnel controlled appointments and promotions, as well as managing the nobility; War, the army; Revenue, the taxes; Works, the infrastructure; Rites, the festivals and imperial examination; and Justice, the magistrates and prefects, as well as the prisons.

It was the last that had long ago become Lin Ronghu’s domain.

The Ministry of Justice wasn’t too far away, and the shortest path there took Lin Ronghu straight through the bustling fish market, whatever fight that had drifted through his window having long been resolved and forgotten. Mornings were thick with the smell of raw fish and seafood, the fishermen having just brought out their wares; it was only later that the streets stalls, full of the tantalizing smells of fried fish or grilled seafood, would come out to compete. Still, too early or not, his favorite stall already had a box, specially made, waiting at the ready for him to pick up and pull into his carriage, the owners well-compensated for their knowledge of his little weakness.

He was just unwrapping the box when he heard a child shriek, “He _talks to ghosts_?!” in a tone of mixed outrage and delight. “ _That’s cheating!_ ”

Lin Ronghu’s lips quirked up into a smirk.

He tapped on the roof of the carriage, signaling a stop to his driver (Rao Min, a local man with a reputation for being simple-minded, when in fact it was only that he hated communicating with most people) and leaned his head out the window to see if he could find the source of the voices.

As he’d suspected, someone had paid the local storyteller to distract the neighborhood children with one of their homegrown legends – and one that Lin Ronghu was _especially_ familiar with. Jiang Ting (courtesy name Guangming, scion of a disgraced scholarly family that had been just young enough not to be executed, currently working as a street scholar to make a living off his literacy to support an even younger sibling) was surrounded by over a dozen enthusiastic children and looked as helpless about it as ever.

“What do you want me to say?” he asked the children, spreading his palms. “That’s part of the story! Yes, he talks to ghosts. They’re the ones who help guide him to the mysteries he needs to solve, and then help him solve them. They’re why Jing Fengchu _became_ a detective.”

“A _beautiful_ detective,” one of the girl children (second daughter, Peng family, fish-sellers) puts in seriously. “Don’t forget that.”

“You can’t _tell_ if he’s beautiful. Doesn’t he wear a mask all time?” one of the boys (eldest son, Guo family, merchants) objected.

“He’s still beautiful! That’s part of the story: Jing Fengchu, the beautiful detective with peerless martial arts –”

“Do you want me to tell you about his latest adventure or not?” Jiang Ting asked, throwing up his hands. “I could always go back to my calligraphy commissions instead, you know –”

Instant protests.

“Does Jing Fengchu’s newest adventure involve ghosts? Oooh, or corpses?” one child (youngest, Li family, fish-sellers) asked—sounding hopeful, no less.

All children were ghouls at heart. 

“Shouldn’t his title say something about ghosts, if he talks to them?” another (second son, Guo family) wondered aloud. “Why is it always the detective with the ‘peerless martial arts’? Most of his stories don’t even _involve_ fighting –”

Lin Ronghu snickered, tossed Jiang Ting a piece of silver – the teenager caught it without even looking up, which suggested that Lin Ronghu was starting to form a habit – and knocked on his roof, going about his way. If there really was a new story, he’d hear the full details once he got to the office.

A beautiful detective with peerless martial arts – the title was so puffed up and absurd it could only be laughed at. It was so obviously the product of a decision made at the age of fourteen, without any sense of understanding of the outside world…but to his credit, ‘Jing Fengchu’ did in fact solve mysteries, thereby fulfilling the ‘detective’ part of his title, even if Lin Ronghu, who knew all the stories, had yet to locate any evidence of those purportedly peerless martial arts.

And he _was_ beautiful.

Lin Ronghu shook his head, admonishing himself: there was no point to such thoughts.

Just as there wasn’t any point in keeping the lovely red plum blossom that he found had been left on his desk in his office at the Ministry of Justice, the sight of which left Lin Ronghu feeling as helpless as poor Jiang Ting had been.

If Jing Fengchu really did have peerless martial arts, it seemed that he used them for one purpose and one purpose only: to break into Lin Ronghu’s office to leave him flowers.

Ridiculous.

At first he’d convinced himself that he was doing it on a dare; after all, why else would anyone persistently leave flowers for the Emperor’s most terrifying and notoriously heartless official? But the years had gone by and the gifts of flowers had persisted –

Lin Ronghu had no time or patience for the motive behind such gifts, as much as he appreciated someone noticing his preference for flowers over useless treasures. It would have been one thing if it had been a bribe, a set-up, a deliberate attempt to win his favor; any of that he could understand, but no. No matter how much he wracked his considerable intellect, he couldn’t identify any such reason.

It was a _crush_.

A silly crush, no less, and one that would undoubtedly pass sooner rather than later—even putting aside their respective social positions, which by itself made any sort of match utterly implausible, Jing Fengchu was still two months shy of _twenty_ , and Lin Ronghu was a dozen years past that. And Lin Ronghu knew all too well the sort of stupid decisions a boy of twenty made, none of which could be trusted in the slightest.

He himself had been not yet twenty when he’d decided to take his chances in the imperial examination –

“Take it out to the main room to let the others enjoy it,” Lin Ronghu instructed Meng Rui when he showed up, and turned his face away as his faithful secretary obediently tucked the morning docket of papers under his arm while he carted the flower away.

He’d left behind an already prepared pot of the stinking cheap tea Lin Ronghu most preferred, too, one of the few remaining reminders of their shared background. Meng Rui, who had the dubious honor of being one of the vanishingly few people Lin Ronghu actually liked, had been the one to lend Lin Ronghu the money he’d needed to come to the capital for the final round of the imperial examinations after unexpectedly passing the provincial level; Lin Ronghu had promptly repaid his kindness with an offer of employment once he’d become an official.

A bizarrely straightforward and seemingly incorruptible man, despite many attempts, the ‘Rui’ in his name stood for ‘river bend’, water-related like most names from their city—Lin Ronghu himself had been born Lin Xun, not that anyone remembered that any longer—but poor Meng Rui was always being teased with suggestions that it meant ‘keen’, in large part because, other than his small and pointed face, he wasn’t.

People often remarked that Meng Rui’s employment was the only sign of mercy to be found in the rapid ascension of Lin Ronghu’s career.

He’d gone almost overnight from teaching children mathematics and poetry to shocking the imperial court with his score in the imperial examination, seizing one of the highest spots despite having no background or connections to aid in his education. Back then, everyone had been interested in luring him over to their camp, offering to be the backing he lacked in exchange for the use of his brilliant mind; everyone had been shocked all over again when he’d decided, contrary to all reason, to join the camp of what had then been the Second Prince, quite unpopular given his short temper and unwise stubbornness regarding his choice of official wife.

Of course, the surprise hadn’t lasted very long, being shortly eclipsed by the ensuing coup…

At any rate, the Emperor was grateful enough for Lin Ronghu’s contributions (never specified publicly) to grant him a courtesy name and the prestigious position of Assistant Minister, although his never hidden dislike of his most unlikely of servants had led him to select the inauspicious name ‘Ronghu’, suggestive of old foxes and their tricks, and to place him within the at the time largely defunct and useless Ministry of Justice, presumably in the hope that Lin Ronghu would gracefully fade away into obscurity until he could be safely forgotten.

That had turned out to be something of a miscalculation.

“Assistant Minister –” Meng Rui started, returning with his hands empty of flowers.

“Have the reports from our people in Jilin province come back in?” Lin Ronghu asked before Meng Rui started in on his health as well. It’d been much better back when his secretary was single; something about the married state (to Lian Yuxiao, daughter of tea merchants and thus eternally horrified at Lin Ronghu’s tea preferences but otherwise practical and level-headed, an excellent choice with a totally clean background once that one disreputable uncle had been quietly eliminated by Lin Ronghu as a wedding present) had made him take to nagging like a worried mother hen. “I still want to find out what they were thinking, trying a tax dodge like that.”

“Jilin province? Oh – yes, those reports came in late last night,” Meng Rui said, effectively distracted from whatever he was going to say, blinking myopically in thought as he recalled the relevant information. “They’ve signed the fraudulent documents at this point, so we have more than enough information to inform the Ministry of Revenue.”

Lin Ronghu’s lips curled. “Who says I’m going to inform Revenue? Defrauding the state is a crime punishable by execution – what a waste of human life! No, no. Far more efficient for me to have a new set of informants in Jilin, especially ones that can tell me exactly why someone would try to hide the fact that their region’s harvest is _better_ than expected.”

“I _had_ been wondering why you were wasting your time with minor tax fraud,” Meng Rui said dryly. “Normally the nation’s illustrious secret spymaster has better things to focus on.”

Lin Ronghu rolled his eyes.

In his defense, not that anyone would ever listen, he’d never _intended_ on becoming a spymaster. 

To this day he technically wasn’t, thus the reference to him being a ‘secret’ spymaster – officially, such work remained firmly outside the purview of his duties. Zha Jianning, the actual spymaster of the imperial court, was perfectly adequate and even moderately competent, if one used a fairly relaxed grading curve.

It was only that Lin Ronghu wasn’t the sort of person content to live as a salted fish, forgotten and overlooked. The Ministry of Justice, however toothless it had been politically, had responsibility over the magistrates, the prefects, and the prisons, a fairly critical task; when Lin Ronghu had been made Assistant Minister, Ren Shijin (an incredibly lazy fellow who’d managed to become Minister of Justice through what Lin Ronghu to this day could only assume was both pure luck and a startling degree of nepotism) had given him free rein to obtain whatever resources he felt he'd needed. And what Lin Ronghu had decided he’d needed was information, and lots of it.

He’d always had a knack for organizing things.

It had come as a nasty shock to the Emperor when, after three years of focusing on foreign affairs, he’d turned his attention domestically and discovered that Lin Ronghu, that embarrassment, has transformed the Ministry of Justice from a petty, corrupt, inept and backwards department into the current juggernaut with a reputation for terrifying omniscience.

The Emperor wasn’t quite foolish enough to look a gift horse in the mouth, however much he might dislike Lin Ronghu personally. Having a well-respected justice system was a critical part of the foundations of his rule, and Lin Ronghu’s magistrates strutted around with their heads held tall, dispensing justice with rulings based on firm evidence that seemed plucked out of thin air but which was unquestionably accurate; the prisons were well-run to the point of very nearly turning a profit even as the number of innocent people unjustly held within those walls fell dramatically; and the prefecture system had been converted almost entirely into an efficient system of collecting information that all filtered up to Lin Ronghu himself. 

And he, naturally, was a loyal patriot who was more than happy to pass along such information to his imperial master.

Even – no, _especially_ – when said imperial master looked like he’d swallowed a bitter lemon every time he was forced to consult Lin Ronghu.

“Give me the morning papers,” he instructed, taking a sip of his tea and wondering why Meng Rui was still holding onto them. “I want to see those reports, and anything new, of course – I hear there’s a new Jing Fengchu story?”

“Oh, yes, the one about the goats –”

Goats? What?

“– but there’s something more urgent: there’s been a murder.”

Lin Ronghu dearly wanted to hear about the matter involving goats, but forced himself back to some amount of professionalism, clearing his throat a little. “Very well, so there’s been a murder. I know we’re representatives of the Ministry of Justice, Meng Rui, but that seems – somewhat below my level?”

Meng Rui shook his head. “Not when the victim is a member of the Imperial Censorate, and the suspected murderer is Tang Bo!”

Lin Ronghu sat up straight, all humor left behind. Tang Shanfeng, inexplicably better known by his given name of Tang Bo, was the Minister of Personnel, a powerful and influential official—a stuffy, snobbish, and excessively promiscuous windbag, but one who was second-to-none at handling the aristocracy with a grasp on foreign affairs that was nearly as sharp.

He was also Lin Ronghu’s personal political nemesis.

The common people often joked that Lin Ronghu knew everything that happened inside the country and Tang Bo everything outside, and that with their joint support the Emperor could even ascend to the Heavens—and this grand undertaking was stymied only by the fact that no one, not even the Emperor, could force them to get along for the time it took to make a cup of tea.

“Arrested, I assume?” he asked, frowning when Meng Rui nodded. “And the victim was part of the Imperial Censorate…what else do we know?”

The Imperial Censorate was the division responsible for investigating the conduct of officials and ensuring their virtuous and righteous conduct; it had long been separate from the Ministry of Justice, and the two were now wholly unrelated despite their parallel duties. Tang Bo, with his moderately corrupt easy-going ways, was a constant subject of their diatribes, to say nothing of their views on his tendency to visit brothels without even having the decency to wear a mask.

“Unfortunately, very little,” Meng Rui explained, finally handing over the packet, which was thinner than Lin Ronghu would have liked. “It was discovered very late last night and the Censorate found out about it first. Normally, one of our prefects would be in charge of any murder investigation, but we can’t really oppose the Censorate’s involvement – it’s one of theirs at issue, after all – and they’re refusing to share anything with us.”

Lin Ronghu scowled, tapping his fingers against the table in thought.

The Censorate didn’t much like him, either, and the feeling was decidedly mutual. In Lin Ronghu’s view, their entire department were a bunch of self-righteous snobs who thought they were better than everyone else, and who, to a man, took a light spot of entirely justified blackmail far too personally.

If they’d already closed the gates, they weren’t about to let him in.

“Unfortunate,” he said, considering the issue carefully. “Still, no matter their objections, we need to know what’s going on.”

He had a few people planted in their ranks, of course, but no one he’d be willing to pull on to appease his curiosity—worse, Tang Bo, as Lin Ronghu’s political enemy, had gotten especially good at identifying Lin Ronghu’s agents, so he didn’t have anyone particularly well placed there, either.

Truly annoying. If there was one thing he _hated_ , it was not having sufficient information.

But how best to go about getting it? The life of a spymaster was one of advance preparation – these sort of rapid plot twists out of some storyteller’s yarn were very much not the way he preferred to go about things.

...now that he thought about it, it occurred to him there was someone who _did_ prefer such things. Someone who might be persuaded to take the job – if only on the basis that it would be very funny.

“Meng Rui,” Lin Ronghu said.

His secretary arched his eyebrows.

“Get me Jing Fengchu.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title is based on the idiom "the fox grieves when the rabbit dies" - aka, when someone in the same position as you suffers, you start worrying. 
> 
> Additionally, the main character names translate to (and please forgive any errors, since I don't know any Mandarin whatsoever):  
> Lin Xun, courtesy name Ronghu - Xun meaning "springs", Ronghu meaning "glorious or luxuriant fox" (aka "fluffy fox") - 林灥 (courtesy name 荣狐)  
> Jing Fengchu - Fengchu meaning "fledgling phoenix" - 经凤雏
> 
> other names at the end to avoid spoilers


	2. Chapter 2

Lin Ronghu supposed that he should be complimented that the supposedly difficult-to-reach detective, who the stories said would only listen to his ghosts, would show up at his gate less than a shichen after he'd sent Meng Rui out with the request, but instead he was mostly just exasperated by Jing Fengchu’s absurd behavior.

His real name wasn’t Jing Fengchu, of course, just as his real identity was not, in fact, a beautiful detective with peerless martial arts. Lin Ronghu would be a poor excuse for a spymaster if he wasn’t aware of who his ardent admirer really was, as Jing Fengchu was well aware, and yet he stubbornly insisted on playing this silly game every time he put on that mask.

As for why Lin Ronghu played along…

Meng Rui murmured a greeting outside Lin Ronghu’s office door, causing Jing Fengchu to laugh.

“Of course I came. Who am I not to come when a beauty calls?” he asked, his voice full of warm laughter. “The lotus roots may break, but I remain bound.”

Lin Ronghu rolled his eyes and settled down behind his desk. He wouldn’t give such a ridiculous person the honor of standing to greet him.

Jing Fengchu strolled in a moment later, a jaunty smirk on his lips and eyes shining underneath his copper mask engraved with a light tracing reminiscent of feathers.

“The storyteller on my street was talking about you today,” Lin Ronghu remarked before Jing Fengchu could start the conversation with something unnecessarily intimate. “One of the children was very disappointed in your ability to speak with ghosts. She claimed it was cheating.”

“There’s no such thing as cheating for a detective,” Jing Fengchu said, throwing himself down on the chair across from Lin Ronghu’s desk. His posture was slouched, his legs casually bent, and Lin Ronghu had a mild urge to tie him to a ruler, or at least to smack him with one. “All that matters is getting to the truth.”

He smiled, and it was as if the room brightened by several degrees.

Lin Ronghu personally had serious reservations that such a creature as ‘truth’ existed in the world, but if there was one truth he was forced to accept, it was that Jing Fengchu, the beautiful detective, was in fact _unreasonably_ beautiful. 

Even while wearing the mask, there was no part of him that could be faulted: dark phoenix eyes bright and clear beneath the mask; skin like unblemished jade; long dark hair that, though casually arranged in a simple crown, somehow looked soft enough to tempt a passerby to touch; a fine figure with broad shoulders, a narrow waist, and long fingers as fine as any scholar’s above sturdy, sword-callused palms…

He’d even somehow gotten to be taller than Lin Ronghu, the brat.

“I saw a play about you, too,” Jing Fengchu added lazily before Lin Ronghu could change the subject. “They said you speak with the birds in the air, summon demons to do your bidding, and change your face the way other people change clothing, all the better to learn people’s secrets.”

Despite himself, Lin Ronghu snorted. “That’s absurd.”

“Which part? They also said that it was impossible for three people to gather together without one being on your payroll, and also that you were blackmailing half the court and bribing the other half.”

Lin Ronghu’s lips twitched. “…mm.”

Jing Fengchu grinned at the non-denial.

Brat.

“I didn’t call you here to exchange pointers on our respective reputations,” Lin Ronghu said, because he didn’t mind the other’s unrestrained ways as much as he probably should. “Tell me: is it true that you only take requests for your work from ghosts?”

Jing Fengchu, who looked as though he was considering whether Lin Ronghu would cut off his feet if he tried to put them up on the desk (he would, too, and damn the consequences), glanced up with an expression of interest.

“Generally, yes,” he said, cocking his head to the side like an overgrown bird. “But on a rare occasion I will make an exception and accept a commission from the living…do you need me for something?”

“There’s no need to look quite so delighted about it. You know perfectly well that I’m thoroughly undiscerning and will accept information from any source.”

“Accept, yes,” Jing Fengchu said, and he was all but glowing; it was enough to make the sun outside blush in envy. “To ask for? That’s a bit rarer. Like a matchless orchid in a field of -”

“I haven’t commissioned you yet,” Lin Ronghu reminded him. “Do you want the job or not?”

“Naturally I do. What is it?”

Lin Ronghu leaned back in his chair, lacing his fingers together. “Yesterday,” he began, “at the estate of the Minister of Personnel, Tang Bo –”

“You want me to look into a murder?” Jing Fengchu interrupted. “For _you_?”

Lin Ronghu gave him a pointed look, and Jing Fengchu had the grace to flush: the entire matter had only taken place last night, and while the news naturally could not be wholly suppressed, it hadn’t yet spread so far that those without a certain level of access would be casually conversant in the facts.

In other words, if Jing Fengchu wanted to _properly_ keep up his façade of being no more than a simple detective, he ought to have played dumb a little while longer.

Still, as they both knew what ought not be spoken, Lin Ronghu decided to dispense with the pleasantries.

“Yes, I suppose you could put it that way,” he said, a little long-suffering. “More accurately, I want you to find out who’s framing him.”

“The matter hasn’t even been investigated and you’re already certain Tang Bo is being framed?”

“Naturally,” Lin Ronghu said. “Don’t get me wrong: Tang Bo would not blink at a murder if it suited his purposes, but – to simply stab a man to death? And to do it on his own estate, with the victim a member of the Imperial Censorate, and to not even to take the most straightforward steps to cover it up? Impossible. He’s far too crafty to do anything this…shoddy.”

Jing Fengchu nodded thoughtfully; he was sitting up properly now, giving the matter his full attention. “Have you considered that it might be a double blind, to throw off suspicion?”

Lin Ronghu snorted. “Let’s not give him _too_ much credit.”

“A matter of impulse, then?”

“You’re assuming the old fart even has a pulse. I’m telling you, even if it were an impulse, he would have planned it better – or are you suggesting that I’ve been competing all these years, with varying degrees of success, against an idiot?”

“…I would never,” Jing Fengchu said, smothering a smirk, but a moment later his expression smoothed out for real. “Why ask me? Everyone knows you’re the real power at the Ministry of Justice, not Minister Ren; you must have dozens of agents at your beck and call. Prefects and magistrates, no less, and investigation of murders is part of their official duties. There’s no need to hire a private detective.”

“A beautiful detective,” Lin Ronghu reminded him drolly. “With peerless martial arts. Or so I’ve heard.”

Jing Fengchu ducked his head, his ears going red.

“At any rate,” Lin Ronghu continued, taking pity on him, “I can’t send in one of my typical agents. For one thing, the Imperial Censorate has already declared that it is taking charge of the investigation, the victim being one of their own, and it would breach etiquette to engage in territorial disputes under the circumstances. For another…it’s _me_.”

“Everyone knows how you feel about Tang Bo,” Jing Fengchu said, nodding. “If you go sniffing around, everyone’s going to think you had something to do with the whole thing. Which you didn’t.”

He paused.

“I didn’t,” Lin Ronghu confirmed, a little dryly.

Jing Fengchu smiled. “I never doubted you for a moment.”

“If that’s true, then you’re an idiot, and I’m wasting my time,” Lin Ronghu said. “Now: any questions before you begin?”

“Any other information you have to share,” Jing Fengchu said, his expression going serious. “That it’s a stabbing makes it difficult, especially if I’m to investigate without being allowed to examine the corpse – depending on the type of wound, the perpetrator could be either man or woman, strong or weak.”

Lin Ronghu nodded. “I don’t have that information, since the Censorate is playing its cards close to its chest, refusing to share information with anyone. It’ll take at least a few days to get a copy of their report on the condition of the body.”

Jing Fengchu blinked, then smiled. “I’d forgotten who I was speaking with. Getting a copy of a secret report drafted by your enemies – why would that cause anything more than a small delay?”

Lin Ronghu permitted himself a small smirk. “Still, any delay could make things difficult. Do you have any other way to approach the issue in the meantime?”

“Of course. We can always look at it from the perspective of motive: if it’s a framing, then the reasoning must be either personal or political. For the personal, the obvious place to begin would be in his home, with his family, although access to that will be difficult given his position. For the political, the obvious suspect is…well, you.”

“Tang Bo does have other political enemies,” Lin Ronghu said, although privately he didn’t disagree. If he wasn’t the first one on the Censorate’s list of possible suspects, they were even more mentally deficient than he’d originally suspected. “It wouldn’t be a waste of time to check on them, but that’s something that they’ll all expect – even if it _was_ one of them, they’ll have taken precautions by now.”

“Of course. Still, as you say, it’s worth checking on – as you’re always saying, a bet on stupidity is never badly placed.”

That did seem like something Lin Ronghu might have said once or twice…possibly more.

“Don’t quote me at me,” he said with dignity. “I’m not a poem.”

Jing Fengchu’s eyes brightened and he opened his mouth to say something that Lin Ronghu was very certain would _not_ be related to the job he’d just accepted.

“Here’s the file that we’ve put together,” he said hastily, offering it up to forestall anything awkward – or worse, _smooth_. Jing Fengchu’s idea of smooth, anyway, which bore little to no resemblance to what Lin Ronghu might consider tempting. “All the irrelevant information has been redacted, of course, but there’s enough in there to get you started.”

Jing Fengchu accepted the file and stood to leave, but he was still smiling. “I’m glad you asked me,” he said, and somehow Lin Ronghu couldn’t look him in eye any longer, no matter that the words were straightforward.

Maybe _because_ they were so very straightforward.

“Jing Fengchu –”

“I’ll be going now,” Jing Fengchu interrupted. “After all, a wise general knows when to retreat – and a lover never to anger a beauty.”

Lin Ronghu watched, helpless as always, as Jing Fengchu walked off, whistling a jaunty tune about fickle flowers in springtime.

Meng Rui poked his head in, an expectant look on his face. “Did you –”

“He forgot.”

Meng Rui blinked, effectively distracted from whatever he’d been about to say. “Forgot? What did he forget? You discussed everything that we know about the case, and you even gave him the file. What more is there?”

Lin Rongha put his face in his hands.

“He forgot to ask about getting _paid_. Meng Rui, help me; I’m employing an idiot.”

Meng Rui burst out laughing.

“I suppose ghosts pay in merits, so there’s no reason for him to get into the habit,” Lin Ronghu said dryly, keeping his hands on his face to hide the smile he couldn’t seem to suppress. “He’s still an idiot.”

“You like him anyway.”

“I do _not_. Meng Rui –”

“You should probably head out if you don’t want to be late for afternoon court,” Meng Rui said, because he was a terrible person and an irritatingly good secretary. “Unless you want to give the Emperor an excuse to cut off your head.”

Lin Ronghu rolled his eyes, but stood. “Given that he hasn’t found a replacement for me yet, I’m not terribly worried. But I suppose it would be beneath both our dignities if I kept our imperial master waiting rather than the other way around.”

Since time immemorial, court officials paid their respects to the Emperor during morning court – with the exception of a very few, including Lin Ronghu. Apparently, seeing him too early in the morning would only give the Emperor a headache.

Indeed, despite the ambiguous circumstances that irrevocably bound them together, Lin Ronghu’s relationship with his Emperor had never been especially good. 

Back when he had been little more than an exceptional scholar and an assistant minister, the Emperor’s obvious dislike of him had been an open secret around court, a subject of gossip and speculation, but little more. Once he’d climbed up into the ranks of the powerful, certain court officials had decided to take advantage of that dislike to do a bit of scheming, successfully inciting the Emperor to publicly comment on Lin Ronghu in an unfavorable manner, and then to summon him for a private conference. Given that Lin Ronghu had no backing outside of the Emperor’s support, everyone had anticipated that the conference would end with his execution.

Instead, the Emperor had emerged, gnashing his teeth and steaming from all seven apertures, to announce that he’d awarded a smirking Lin Ronghu a great deal of gold, as well as various rare treasures – and no one had tried such a straightforward challenge to Lin Ronghu’s position ever since.

His very definitive response to the officials who had schemed against him also contributed.

Of course, winning a political victory didn’t actually change the Emperor’s feelings, and so Lin Ronghu resigned himself, as always, to the usual petty game of being made to wait outside the golden doors of the throne room even though the Emperor knew perfectly well he’d arrived.

Lin Ronghu spent today’s waiting period studying his reflection in the doors.

It was pointless, of course – he knew what he looked like, and it wasn’t anything like the flowers Jing Fengchu kept comparing him to. The most flattering thing anyone had ever said about his looks was that they were somewhat striking, and it was usually not meant as a compliment. The only good feature he had were his eyes, dark and bright, but they were typically red-rimmed from a perpetual lack of sleep, sunk deep into his too-skinny, too-sharp face, with thin lips and cheekbones that were a little too visible, and the rest of his body followed the same pattern of being more sharp edges than anything else. He wasn’t attractive enough to be called a fox-face, even with his name urging people to make the comparison, and his hair was a dull, uninteresting black, too light for the lustrous midnight hue currently in fashion and lacking the bloodthirsty red tint people often expected, except maybe a little under candlelight.

He was exactly what he’d always been: a scholar with a weak constitution and bad lungs, of middling height and complexion, with no interest in fashion that might conceal his other faults.

In short, the only possible explanation for Jing Fengchu’s persistent attempts at courtship was that his brain had started to rot from the effects of prolonged celibacy. 

Lin Ronghu really should recommend that he consider taking on a concubine – even if he couldn’t obtain a formal marriage, it wasn’t as though he was like Lin Ronghu, distinctly aware of the strong preference of the imperial throne that he remain without issue and very careful to make clear that he required neither medication nor surgery to assist him in achieving that result.

On second thought, no, he won’t make such a suggestion. Jing Fengchu would only use it as an opening to offer the position to _him_.

“Assistant Minister?”

Lin Ronghu looked up. It was one of the court eunuchs (surnamed Gao, currently taking bribes from both the Empress and the Second Prince’s concubine mother, which would make for an interesting conflict at some point in the future); the second Lin Ronghu laid eyes on him, he cleared his throat awkwardly and averted his eyes as if he thought merely looking at Lin Ronghu would bring him bad luck.

Now _that_ was a far more typical reaction to Lin Ronghu’s presence, especially among those with secrets they wanted to keep hidden.

“Your honored self has permission to enter.”

The Emperor, it turned out, was finishing up a meal with his sons.

Lin Ronghu resisted the urge to roll his eyes, but only barely. It looked like today he was being used as a pointed reminder of the Emperor’s power, a warning against factionalism, against ambition, against secret plots – the paranoia of an Emperor who had come to power through a coup, fearful of his own children the way his own father had not adequately been against him.

What a waste of time. If Lin Ronghu had wanted to be used as an educational prop, he would have stayed at home and remained a teacher.

“In recent days, we have received a number of memorials relating to bandits by the nearby foothills,” the Emperor said, ignoring Lin Ronghu’s arrival.

“His Imperial Majesty, in his wisdom, is as always focused on the most critical of issues,” Lin Ronghu said in what could potentially be construed in a respectful fashion, unless of course one was aware that one of the Emperor’s most trusted ministers had been arrested for murder the night before.

He smiled thinly and bowed when the Emperor twisted to glare at him, while the princes all very conscientiously pretended not to exist.

Excluding the two princesses, there were five of them – each with a different mother, a surefire recipe for harem intrigue even before considering the Empress’ scandalous history. The two eldest were only a few years junior to Lin Ronghu, the youngest not even half his age, so there was still a little time before the competition became truly cutthroat, though not as much as the Emperor would have preferred.

After a long moment, the First Prince (Zhao Ren, courtesy name Yongci, both names meaning benevolence) decided to live up to his names by breaking the awkward silence. “Imperial Father, the memorials demonstrate that the officials believe that the presence of bandits so close to the capital is an insult to the imperial dignity; they should be crushed at once.”

“It’s hardly as though they live up to their name of bandits,” the Second Prince said at once. His name was Zhao De, courtesy name Luping, and he hated nothing more than to be outdone by Zhao Ren – a familial legacy, as his Deng family, a military lineage, had cordially detested Zhao Ren’s scholarly Shao family since time immemorial. “A few criminals run wild, at most, with a minimal range of activity extending to nothing more than harassing the few individuals too foolish to pay for an escort – and it’s not as though they are brave enough to ever come into the capital itself. Are we to violate ancient restrictions for such a small purpose?”

“It is not only those with the means to pay for an escort that require protection,” Zhao Ren said peaceably. He lacked Zhao De’s innate charm, coming across as more severe and almost anemic in comparison, but he did give the impression of being noticeably more mature despite being only a year older at twenty-seven. “Nor is there necessarily the need to breach restrictions by permitting a general to bring troops so close to the city, especially if they are so few as you suggest.”

“Are you suggesting we denude the city walls by sending the guards?” Zhao De asked snidely. Not much of a surprise, his maternal uncle was the head of the city guards, and thus the one who would be punished for the failure of any such expedition. “Or perhaps the palace guards instead, opening our doors to invite external attack –”

“Why are there bandits there to begin with?” the Fourth Prince, Zhao Jie, wondered aloud.

Lin Ronghu did his best not to wince at the straightforwardness of the question. Poor little Zhao Jie! In a more just world, he would be Crown Prince already – he was the son the Empress, who the Emperor adored beyond all reason, had fought so hard to bear successfully to term; his given name ‘Jie’ meant outstanding, representing her hopes for him.

Alas, he’d inherited her delicate features but none of her willpower; he was simple-minded and easy-going to the point of being easily bullied, his head always in the clouds and a smile always on his lips. The courtesy name bestowed on him by his father, Runyi, meant beneficence, a helpless acknowledgment of his temperament and lack of suitability for the brutal jockeying necessary for seizing the throne from the other princes – especially given that his mother the Empress had no strong family backing, having won and maintained her position through the Emperor’s love alone.

He would be a _terrible_ Emperor – of course, despite all of that, Zhao Jie was very much in the running, even if only purely on the basis of being the Emperor’s favorite.

“The bandits are operating in the foothills of the mountains to the west – too close to the capital for any general’s army to operate, but too far away to be dealt with by the city,” Zhao De explained, voice neutral; it was well known that cozying up to the Fourth Prince was a good way to win imperial favor, but none of the other princes were especially fond of such humiliation. “There isn’t an obvious candidate to eliminate them, and so they continue to run free.”

“Oh,” Zhao Jie said. “But – you said they were criminals. If they’re criminals, wouldn’t…”

He glanced over at Lin Ronghu, whose Ministry of Justice was responsible for the apprehension of criminals, and was clearly about to continue when his younger brother Zhao Yi, courtesy name Youji, kicked him under the table to make him stop before he actively offended Lin Ronghu with his implications. 

Zhao Jie and Zhao Yi, the Fourth and Fifth Princes, were like twins, born less than a month apart in an intentional effort on the part of the Emperor to ensure that his precious Empress wouldn’t need to resort to a mere wet-nurse. The Fifth Prince’s mother, from the relatively newly risen Fu family, had been clever enough not to take insult, and the result of it all was that Zhao Yi, a clever and cute little fox-face, was always leading Zhao Jie into and out of trouble – though never with Lin Ronghu.

Lin Ronghu had occasionally contemplated telling them that he would never condescend to actually be offended by a pair of fourteen year old boys, but it was just too funny watching them scurry around him as if they still believed the stories about how he enjoyed devouring badly behaved children.

“They’re attacking individual travelers and merchants,” Zhao Ren said, opting to ignore Zhao Jie’s interjection. “This stains the reputation of our capital. A strong reproach is appropriate.”

“And who do you propose deal out that reproach?” Zhao De shot back. “Any general that dares take on the task will be censured by the court and stripped of their military power – though of course that doesn’t affect your Shao family, naturally; all scholars. No risk, all reward, is it?”

Zhao Ren frowned and was about to respond when another voice, lighter and younger, cut in.

“It seems to me to be a little pointless to debate a solution when we haven’t even addressed the problem.”

Everyone at the table twisted to look at the Third Prince.

He shrugged and elaborated: “That our Imperial Father has invited the presence of the honorable Assistant Minister suggests that the real question is not how the bandits should be dealt with, but rather the question raised by the Fourth Prince: why _are_ the bandits there? Or, more accurately, who benefits from their being there, and who is motivated to protect them? This prince can only assume that that is the reason they’ve been left to run free.”

The two eldest princes looked a little sour: it was a clever move, simultaneously displaying intelligence by correctly answering the question, showing humility by giving the credit to the Fourth Prince, and indirectly flattering both the Emperor and Lin Ronghu all at once. The youngest two looked as though they were aware that they’d missed some sort of clever play, but weren’t quite sure what it had been. Even the Emperor was nodding in approval.

The Third Prince ignored each and every one of these reactions in favor of glancing over at Lin Ronghu.

And Lin Ronghu –

Lin Ronghu was forcing himself not to smile for fear that _certain people_ might take it as encouragement to continue showing off their cleverness, which they most definitely should _not_ have been doing. Being too outstanding was a surefire way to draw unwanted attention – attention that could be disastrous, especially if one happened to have secrets that could be used against them.

Only an idiot would do such a reckless thing just to impress someone.

An idiot like the Third Prince, Zhao Yan, who had received the courtesy name Jingliang in recognition of his bright smile that could light up a room. Who was the picture of perfect etiquette, arms at his side, back straight as a ruler, looking like he’d never once thought of slouching, or putting his feet on someone’s desk –

Or, say, running around outside the Palace in a mask under a terrible pseudonym, solving whatever mysteries took his fancy under the claim that the ghosts made him do it.

Lin Ronghu must have lost his mind when he’d decided to hire Jing Fengchu.


	3. Chapter 3

After the princes were dismissed, Lin Ronghu finally had the opportunity to deliver his report, nominally a supplement to the Minister of Justice’s morning report but in reality an update on the results of his information network. 

Of course, putting aside Tang Bo’s matter, there wasn’t anything especially interesting happening, which meant that Lin Ronghu nattered on about minutiae until the Emperor finally realized that he wasn’t going to get a report on Tang Bo – there wasn’t much point, in Lin Ronghu’s view, to re-reporting the contents of the three other official reports the Emperor had already received – and kicked Lin Ronghu out.

Long inured to his Emperor’s temper, Lin Ronghu took advantage of the fact that he was already inside the Imperial Palace to turn his feet towards the lower levels of the outermost wing of the palace, where the Imperial Censorate kept its more highly regarded prisoners.

It wasn’t that far a walk, even for someone with a constitution as poor as his, but it turned out that that the reflection of the sun off the newly repainted walkways was noticeably more dizzying than Lin Ronghu had anticipated. He was thoroughly out of breath by the time he got to the Censorate’s prison, his face so black that the guards at the gate broke protocol to usher him inside to get him out of the sun, offering him a restorative cup of tea instead of barking at him to go away the way they were supposed to.

Rumor would almost certainly cast it retrospectively as a brilliant ploy on his part.

Feeling moderately smug about how he’d managed to get past the door without even paying the usual set of bribes, Lin Ronghu unhurriedly made his way down the long hallway towards the suite where the Censorate was currently keeping Tang Bo.

“Assistant Minister Lin,” a cold voice said, breaking into his reverie. “I see you have wasted no time in coming to throw rocks down a well.”

Lin Ronghu smiled thinly at the man stepping out of the shadows. “Assistant Minister Zhang should be more filial. No matter what his current circumstances, etiquette dictates that one should not compare one’s master to a frog.”

“I didn’t –” Zhang Fujing, Assistant Minister of Personnel and Tang Bo’s personal protégé, seemed to abruptly realize that denying it wouldn’t do him any good and scowled at Lin Ronghu instead. A scion of a once powerful noble family, now thoroughly impoverished, he’d joined the imperial court a few years before Lin Ronghu, climbing to his position through the more traditional pathway of familial connections and bribery; like Tang Bo, it offended his sense of dignity that a commoner like Lin Ronghu had reached such heights of power in such a short amount of time. For Zhang Fujing, that snobbery was compounded by the additional irritation that, despite their nominally equivalent positions, Lin Ronghu was widely viewed as on par with his master, not him. “You have no business with Minister Tang.”

“Whether or not I do is for the Minister to decide,” Lin Ronghu said. “No one, least of all me, will force him to speak, but with his current residence so far outside his usual office, he does not have the authority to bar my entrance – and neither do you.”

Zhang Fujing’s scowl deepened. “Whatever scheme it is you’re planning –”

“Assistant Minister Zhang is undoubtedly a very busy man, stepping up to fill his master’s shoes in his absence,” Lin Ronghu said. “That is a task that will only get harder the more you linger here to debate with me.”

“You –!” Zhang Fujing gnashed his teeth. “If Minister Tang has no authority here, then neither do you; this is the Censorate’s halls, not the Ministry of Justice. You cannot simply _dismiss_ me as if I were one of your lackeys –”

“A-Qi, he’s goading you on purpose,” another voice cut in, deep and naturally jovial although sounding more tired than anything else at the moment. “Simply ignore him and go do what I’ve asked you to do.”

Zhang Fujing huffed, but bowed deeply in the direction of the door from which he had emerged, saluted Lin Ronghu so perfunctorily that it was unclear if his back had descended so much as an inch towards the ground, and left first.

Lin Ronghu walked inside and politely saluted Tang Bo, who was sitting at the table with a pot of tea and a badly hidden bottle of liquor stuffed under the table. “Minister Tang.”

“Assistant Minister Lin,” Tang Bo replied, inclining his head. “I trust you will forgive Zhang Fujing his rudeness – it stems only from frustration at the circumstances.”

“Already forgiven,” Lin Ronghu said. “I’m a very forgiving person, you know.”

That got Tang Bo to laugh, his substantial frame jiggling even if the laugh was purely sarcastic. “Sit down already, Lin Ronghu,” he says, dropping the formality as unnecessary. “You know perfectly well I hate seeing you anywhere above me.”

“Is that supposed to convince me to sit?” Lin Ronghu asked, amused, although he did fold himself down. He’d already been standing around pointlessly for too long today. “Tell me, Tang Bo; how are you enjoying your newest set of living quarters? To your taste?”

Tang Bo snorted. “Stop implying that you had something to do with this. You’re far too clever to lock me away while you still have a use for me.”

Lin Ronghu smiled.

He and Tang Bo had cordially hated each other since the Emperor’s coronation twelve years prior when Tang Bo had made a comment, meant to be overheard, bemoaning the innate inferiority of commoners that spoiled nice events with their lack of manners, and Lin Ronghu had in response implied that it was treasonous to suggest that anything could ruin the Emperor’s coronation day, least of all the presence of one of the Emperor’s beloved people. And then, while everyone had been gaping at the arrogant nobody who dared rebut the head of one of the most powerful families in the capital, Lin Ronghu had followed it up with a half-finished comment about the slavish devotion to manners in the previous Emperor’s reign that had had Tang Bo turn red with fury over the implications.

They’d been at swords drawn and bows bent ever since – but twelve years at each other’s throats had taught them a great deal about each other, the way their interests diverged and aligned, the way they would react, the sort of positions they could be counted on taking; familiarity that was invaluable in the vicious world of the imperial court. In short, they had become very good enemies, and a very good enemy was in some strange way very near to a good friend.

Something Zhang Fujing had yet to learn.

“I’d rather have you as Minister than your protégé,” he finally conceded. “He’s far too temperamental, not to mention prone to bearing grudges.”

“He’s still young.” A moment’s pause. “Don’t give me that look; you’re only younger than him if you’re actually the age you say you are, rather than being an immortal demon belched out from some stinking pit.”

“That one’s new.” Lin Ronghu accepted the cup of tea Tang Bo poured for him. It was almost certainly better quality than any of the stuff Lin Ronghu preferred to drink, which meant he’d have to drink it while it was warm to make it palatable. “I trust the Censorate hasn’t been stupid enough to do more than question you yet?”

“They haven’t even done that,” Tang Bo said, shaking his head in agreement when Lin Ronghu clicked his tongue in disapproval. “I think they’re hoping that some time in their custody will encourage me to reflect – to think of ‘forty years of home and country, three thousand li of mountains and rivers…’”

“I don’t think you’ve quite reached the point of comparing yourself to Shen Yue’s slender waist or Pan Yue’s ragged locks,” Lin Ronghu said archly, jumping ahead in the referenced poem. “In all the capital, only your cat is fatter than you.”

Tang Bo chuckled and patted his belly. “I did always tell you that one of me is worth three of you.”

“I’d rather be measured by your cat. Now stop committing treason by comparing yourself to past monarchs and tell an old enemy what happened so that he might better lock the door to your prison forever.”

“You weren’t planning on doing that already?”

“Naturally. But you know how I like to keep things tidy. It just wouldn’t be narratively satisfying if I didn’t know exactly what you did – or what you claim to have been doing at the time of the murder.”

Tang Bo, who was also quite an accomplished scholar, barely resisted rolling his eyes. A moment later, however, he grimaced. “Unfortunately, you and I are in the same boat – I, too, would very much like to know that.”

Lin Ronghu’s eyebrows went up. “You don’t have an explanation for your whereabouts?”

“No.”

“Not at all?” Lin Ronghu asked, bemused. “Even a poor one, like ‘I was in my office alone’ or ‘I fell asleep on a bench where no one could see me’, would be enough to get you out on bail, lest the Censorate be seen as impugning your honor as an official.”

“I drank too much wine that afternoon,” Tang Bo admitted. “Such that by evening…in short, I have no memory of where I was or what I was doing during the relevant time. But I’m entirely certain I didn’t kill that man.”

“As am I,” Lin Ronghu said, a touch regretfully. He had to give whoever was doing this some measure of respect; they really had found an excellent time to frame Tang Bo, who was just stubbornly honest enough to refuse to lie about his shoddy memory. “I’ve had the misfortune of seeing you drunk; you’re disgusting, but not dangerous.”

Tang Bo’s eyebrows went up. “Disgusting?”

“Yes, you nearly gave me a hug once. It was only through significant effort that I narrowly avoided the worst moment of my life.”

Tang Bo’s eyes involuntarily curved up into crescents. “Quite the compliment, from the son of a river pirate with a mortal fear of water.”

“River _merchant_ ,” Lin Ronghu corrected, though in truth which description was the more accurate varied along with the season. “And as you’re well aware, it’s not fear, it’s seasickness. Mention it again and I’ll throw up on you just at the thought.”

Tang Bo held up his hands in immediate surrender.

“What did you do during the afternoon preceding the event, then?” Lin Ronghu asked, returning to the main subject. “The portion that you still remember, anyway. You were at home?”

“Yes, all day; the Ministry offices were closed to clean out some rats –”

“And they missed your entire staff? Your exterminators aren’t very thorough.”

“That an opening exists doesn’t mean you need to take it. Anyway, I’d relocated the core part of the Ministry to my home; there were people going in and out all day on a variety of tasks. All of my staff were there; they’d all be able to testify that I spent the day in my office – though that doesn’t help much, given where the murder happened.”

“No, it doesn’t. Any meetings that afternoon?”

“Nothing that particularly stands out. I finished reviewing the Ministry’s accounts in the early afternoon, then I spoke with representatives from the Ministry of Rites – picking invitations for the holiday next month – and then a few short meetings, though nothing of any substance was settled.”

“Being obscure is only going to make me have to waste time asking my agents the same question,” Lin Ronghu reminded him.

Tang Bo rolled his eyes. “Fine. An overture from one of the princes’ factions, the delivery of a bribe regarding the inheritance of a minor noble title, and an _interminable_ meeting with a sub-minister from the Ministry of Works regarding what to name a bridge – maybe that’s why I drank so much. I swear that Ministry only exists as a place for the Emperor to hide all the bores.”

Lin Ronghu personally rather liked the straightforward and terribly earnest people that generally staffed the Ministry of Works, but they did tend to go on and on as if the world found the mechanics of building infrastructure as fascinating as they did.

“You say that as if, as Minister of Personnel, you weren’t in large part responsible for who gets put there,” he remarked. “Also – a prince? Really? Isn’t your family already committed to backing Zhao Yi?”

“Mm, yes, my wife’s a Fu as well; he’s my nephew once removed by marriage. Still, he’s quite young, and it doesn’t make sense to stake everything on one throw of the dice…I don’t suppose you’d be willing to share which one you back?”

“I still haven’t quite accepted that they’re old enough to need backing,” Lin Ronghu deflected casually. “I still remember when I lived at the Second Prince’s palace, spending my free time giving Zhao Ren pointers in math or avoiding Zhao De’s attempts at composition.”

Those had been the fairly torturous nine months between his victory in the imperial examinations and the Emperor’s coup – Lin Ronghu had been so impoverished that he couldn’t rent out a closet, much less a villa, and anyway the Emperor, then the Second Prince, had been too paranoid to allow his newest co-conspirator any significant freedom. At that time, he’d only ever interacted with the two oldest princes, who at fifteen and fourteen were the only ones old enough to greet guests as adults rather than hidden away from sight as children.

To the extent Zhao Yan, who would only begin his escapades as Jing Fengchu six years later, had been there, Lin Ronghu hadn’t seen him.

“It doesn’t help that not a single one of them has been raised to be a king, or permitted an official marriage, as if they were all still children,” Tang Bo agreed. “Truly unfortunate – their father rebelled over his choice in wives, and now he won’t let them have _any_.”

“Their father rebelled because the previous Emperor was stupid enough to tell an exceedingly ambitious man to his face that he would be out of the running for the throne if he insisted on making Wu Yingmeng his official wife.”

“She was another man’s concubine!”

“And now she’s our Empress. I don’t see the problem.”

“Of course you wouldn’t,” Tang Bo said. “You still have the soul of a commoner; I’m sure people are swapping wives left and right where you come from. The rest of us can appreciate the ancient virtues.”

“I think I wrote an essay on those virtues during the imperial examination,” Lin Ronghu mused, making Tang Bo roll his eyes so hard that it looked painful. He put down his teacup and stood. “I doubt I’ll be able to come again, lest the Censorate become truly paranoid regarding my motives and think that I might actually be trying to help you. Do try not to get your tongue chopped off in the meantime – I would so miss our banter.”

Tang Bo waved a hand. “Unless and until you manufacture some good evidence against me, the Censorate wouldn’t dare even think it. Thank you for coming to mock me in my time of need, and for drinking tea of far finer quality than that garbage tongue of yours deserves – whenever they decide to execute you for being a loathsome old fox, I’ll be sure to repay the favor.”

“I look forward to you one day smuggling me out of the capital by some means other than a boat,” Lin Ronghu said dryly. “Likely in some grossly humiliating fashion.”

Tang Bo was still cackling when Lin Ronghu left.

On his way out he bribed one of the guards (Xiao Tian, possessed of a sick mother whose medicine was paid by one of Tang Bo’s friends) to deliver an extra meal to Tang Bo’s suite that evening, with instructions that Tang Bo be told that its purpose was to prevent another Shen Yue.

The thought of Tang Bo cursing his name kept Lin Ronghu smiling the entire journey back to his office in the Ministry.

The smile faded when he actually arrived.

“Meng Rui,” he said with a sigh. “Take the flower out of my office.”

“When does he find the time?” Meng Rui wondered, picking it up – it was an azalea, lush and gorgeous, beautiful purples and brilliant reds. Lin Ronghu had several in his garden at home, mostly dying of neglect, but even at their peak they were never as beautiful as this one. “Or the flowers, for that matter?”

Lin Ronghu shook his head and did not respond.

His meeting with Tang Bo, however refreshing the exchange of cutting quips was, had not been especially fruitful. If the other man had had any information, he would have shared it, knowing as well as Lin Ronghu did that no one would ever suspect them of ever working together. For all that their rivalry was real, in the imperial court, even real enmity was in some ways manufactured – all for the benefit of the only audience that mattered.

Just as every action taken within the walls of the palace was done with an eye towards the only prize that counted. After all, in the face of the allure of power, what else mattered?

Less than twelve years after the Emperor had ruthlessly eliminated all obstacles between him and the throne, even the amiable Tang Bo could casually speak of not staking everything on one throw of the dice, even if that throw was his nephew by marriage. 

That was the world Lin Ronghu was used to. To join it, he had severed virtually all ties with his hometown, concealed all his weaknesses, and maintained a purposeful distance even from those few incorruptibles like Meng Rui; it was a sacrifice he had made for power – and power he had, power he understood.

What he didn’t understand was –

Honestly, it would have been _easier_ if he’d believed Jing Fengchu’s absurd courtship was a quixotic means of obtaining political support from that most prickly and standoffish of court officials. That was the sort of thing he could understand. A political machination, a childish dare, even some sort of bizarre religious penance…anything but a crush.

A _pointless_ crush.

No matter what aspect you looked at, they were ill-matched: Lin Ronghu was too old, his background too low, his conduct too ambiguous, and it wasn’t as though he could bear children. Of the two of them, Jing Fengchu was the beautiful one – if Lin Ronghu had been the one doing the pursuing, no one would have questioned it. A toad might hunger for swan meat, but who had ever heard of a swan gone mad for a toad?

Of course, Jing Fengchu was only following in his august father’s footsteps in fixating on a thoroughly inappropriate target for his affections – though Lin Ronghu didn’t think that he’d take it as far as murdering a large swath of the imperial court in order to have the final say over his choice in wives.

Well, he’d _better_ not.

Honestly, the entire business of masquerading as a detective was to Jing Fengchu’s own disadvantage: if the Emperor ever found out what his third son was up to, it would be catastrophic, and if anyone else at court, such as his brothers, found out first, he was opening himself up to blackmail. It was exactly the sort of thing that was the fundamental basis of Lin Ronghu’s self-chosen profession, and yet he had repeatedly failed to take advantage of this most low hanging of fruit.

Instead, he played along, pointlessly indulging him, even losing his mind so far as to _hire_ him as if he really were just a detective – and for what? Measured against all the myriad disadvantages, why did Lin Ronghu persist?

Just because he found it _funny_?

Lin Ronghu, widely known throughout the empire as a creature of ruthless, amoral logic, considered this question for a long moment and then put his face into his hands.

His stupid sense of humor was going to get him killed down to the ninth generation.


	4. Chapter 4

“Assistant Minister?”

“What is it, Meng Rui?” Lin Ronghu asked, idly wasting paper with a scribble of a small, extremely fluffy phoenix flying into a brick wall as he flipped through the evening set of reports. In addition to receiving urgent reports throughout the day, he received an update of the most critical developments three times a day to ensure he remained up to speed.

When there was no answer, Lin Ronghu looked up.

Jing Fengchu grinned down at him. “Is that supposed to be us?” he asked. “I’m glad to see I’m making progress – the last phoenix you drew was on fire.”

“Phoenixes are meant to be on fire,” Lin Ronghu said, glaring at Meng Rui, standing helplessly by the door with an expression of ‘don’t blame me, he just walked in here, I tried to warn you.’ “Anyway, sit and tell me what you found. If you had time to go flower-picking, you had time to get me answers.”

“O miserable me! I brave dangers untold to bring flowers by moonlight, but my lover’s heart remains unmoved. But I remain unmoved! ‘Night after night, I long for you until the water clock fades –’”

Lin Ronghu pinched the bridge of his nose. Jing Fengchu’s dramatics were not funny, and he was _definitely_ not going to laugh.

Meng Rui coughed. “I’ll be going now, Assistant Minister.”

Lin Ronghu waved him away; he’d already stayed later than he should, and Lin Ronghu didn’t want Lian Yuxiao storming into his office to scold him about stealing her husband away any more than she was already inclined to do.

“You really should be more aware of your surroundings,” Jing Fengchu said, finally sitting down. His eyes were curved under his copper mouth, happy in a way Lin Ronghu has never seen Zhao Yan without the mask; it went a long way to ameliorating Lin Ronghu’s vague desire to smack some sense into him. “A spymaster that doesn’t know what’s happening around him – truly tragic, especially when we have murders and bandits popping up at every turn. Have you considered hiring an attentive bodyguard to watch over you? I volunteer my services.”

Never mind. Lin Ronghu was going to strangle him, bury him in a pit, and cover up the murder by making it seem like one of the other princes did it.

Maybe Zhao Jie, just because no one would ever believe it.

Jing Fengchu coughed. “Has anyone ever told you how lovely your eyes are when you’re feeling murderous?”

Lin Ronghu bared his teeth. “Try again.”

“I…have information about regarding the investigation?”

“Better. What have you found?”

“Not as much as I’d like,” Jing Fengchu said. He sighed, straightening up in his chair to focus on the matter at hand, thereby developing a vague resemblance to the prince he was the rest of the time. “None of Tang Bo’s political rivals appear to be celebrating excessively – I checked – and your file suggested that there wasn’t much to be found looking into our victim, so I went to Tang Bo’s house to see if anyone there knew anything about Yu Rulian before he became our victim.”

Lin Ronghu doubted it. The file his agents had quickly pulled together for Yu Han, courtesy name Rulian, was obviously incomplete – he hadn’t had any notable vices or hobbies to attract Lin Ronghu’s attention while he was alive, and finding a man’s secrets was more difficult once he was dead. Not that Yu Rulian seemed to have many: the second son of a minor official who’d gotten his post in the Censorate through a distant familial connection following a fairly good performance in the imperial examinations, his entire life seemed to revolve around his work. He dressed like the other people in the Censorate, used the same ink, drank the same tea, rode in the same carriages, attended the same events…even his personal life was the same: he was in the process of negotiating an engagement with a daughter of a local family with connections to the Censorate; it was so nakedly a means of advancement that Lin Ronghu doubted he’d ever met his intended bride.

He’d sent some prefects to check anyway, of course.

“I then interviewed a number of his servants –”

“What, all this afternoon?”

“I’m very efficient,” Jing Fengchu said, white teeth shining as he grinned. “Anyway, nobody remembered _anyone_ from the Censorate coming to visit, much less Yu Rulian in particular, but I did find a few interesting points.”

Lin Ronghu arched his eyebrows.

“First, there were seven people from the Ministry of Personnel staying at Tang Bo’s house –”

“Because their offices were closed for extermination, yes.”

“Correct. Of those seven, three were secretaries that stayed in the courtyard, transcribing requests and instructions before handing them off to couriers at the gate – they claim to have been together all day, so it seems unlikely that any of them were responsible. Well, unless they conspired together to do it, which also seems unlikely.”

Lin Ronghu nodded, agreeing; thus far, nothing he had heard about this murder seemed especially well planned, the far too convenient miracle of Tang Bo’s memory loss aside.

“The remaining four were Tang Bo himself, Assistant Minister Zhang Fujing, and two sub-ministers, He Hao and Shangguan Ye. They were all sequestered together in Tang Bo’s study reviewing accounts from mid-morning until early afternoon –”

So far, this lined up with Tang Bo’s testimony – though Lin Ronghu was begrudgingly impressed at how much information a random detective had managed to extract from Tang Bo’s normally tight-lipped servants. 

Maybe he’d flirted it out of them?

“– after which point each went their own way. Of course, I haven’t identified any reason for any of _them_ to kill a member of the Imperial Censorate – none of them have had any memorials entered against them, nor are they under investigation, as far as I know. I haven’t even heard of any vices that might lead them to be targeted.”

Jing Fengchu paused and looked at Lin Ronghu.

“He Hao gambles on occasion, but only with friends and not in any great amount,” Lin Ronghu supplied. “Shangguan Ye is a womanizer, but he’s not rich enough for it to be a real problem – he has three concubines, no main wife, and regularly visits a small handful of prostitutes, although he doesn’t mantain any of them in any serious fashion. It’s just about manageable on his current income, and I haven’t heard anything about him going beyond that.”

“With a memory like yours, I sometimes wonder why you even bother collecting files on people,” Jing Fengchu said, grinning.

“I’m a scholar; we like to write,” Lin Ronghu sniffed, though he was a little pleased despite himself. “Anyway – Zhang Fujing is ambitious and the obvious candidate to step into Tang Bo’s shoes if this mystery isn’t resolved, but given that his smooth career so far has been entirely due to Tang Bo’s patronage, framing his master would be extremely short-sighted of him. Moreover, he doesn’t have any particular interactions with the Censorate to my knowledge – his most severe vice is miserliness, understandable given his family history as impoverished nobility, but the Censorate hasn’t investigated anyone for skimping on charitable works in years.”

“I’m keeping all three of them on my list as suspects since they were on the premises, but I agree that none of them appear to have any discernible motive beyond generalized ambition,” Jing Fengchu said. “And if _that_ were enough to drive a man to murder, the population of our capital would be significantly reduced. So no luck there. However, I’ve identified three instances that can be described as out of the ordinary.”

“You’re really very good at this detective business,” Lin Ronghu said, despite himself, and he couldn’t quite bring himself to regret or caveat the words no matter how much Jing Fengchu lit up in obvious delight. He _shouldn’t_ be doing this, of course, but it really was undeniable that after stripping away all the glitter of his flamboyant disguise – the beautiful detective with the peerless martial arts that could speak to ghosts – he was really very good at uncovering truths and solving mysteries. If Jing Fengchu hadn’t been who he was, Lin Ronghu would have tried to make their employment relationship a permanent one. Maybe by offering him a magistracy…well, there was no point in imagining a world that didn’t exist. “Go on, what did you find?”

“First, one of Tang Bo’s servants, Mu Liang, was seen leaving and returning four times over the course of the day, and he was remarkably unforthcoming –”

“Don’t worry about that one,” Lin Ronghu interrupted. “You’re not wrong, he has a secret, but it’s nothing.”

Jing Fengchu frowned.

“It’s something he gets remunerated for,” Lin Ronghu clarified.

Jing Fengchu’s expression cleared. “One of yours?”

“He’d like to be,” Lin Ronghu scoffed. “Anyway, the other two?”

Jing Fengchu’s smile faded. “I hate to mention it, but – late in the day, Jiang Guangming was seen loitering not far from Tang Bo’s back gate.”

Lin Ronghu frowned. “Jiang Ting? The _storyteller_?”

“Yes, I know, I like him too. But Tang Bo was one of the people who reported the Jiang clan for embezzlement to the previous Emperor; while it’s fairly well known that he submitted several memorials arguing that the order of mass execution was unnecessary, he’s still responsible, if indirectly, for the deaths of the majority of Jiang Ting’s family. It’s a motive, even if it doesn’t explain why or how a member of the Censorate was lured there.”

“Jiang Ting shouldn’t have the connections necessary to even talk to a member of the Censorate, much less invite them somewhere,” Lin Ronghu said, tapping his finger against the desk as he sometimes did while thinking. “He wasn’t even three years old when the whole thing happened. But I agree, he should be questioned – I’ll talk to him myself in the morning; he can usually be found in the market outside my house.”

“I’ll meet you there, then,” Jing Fengchu said, then held up his hands when Lin Ronghu glared. “It’s my case! He was _there_ – even if he turns out not to be the perpetrator, he might have seen something that will help me solve the rest of it. Most mysteries can’t be solved just by checking in with a ghost, you know.”

Lin Ronghu snorted despite himself. “Ah, yes, your ‘ghosts’. I almost forgot that part of the story. Rather than doing all this investigating, wouldn’t it be easier to summon up Yu Rulian’s spirit to check on his recollection of his murderer?”

“He didn’t stick around,” Jing Fengchu said blithely, ignoring the way Lin Ronghu rolled his eyes. “Anyway, that brings me to point number three: Tang Bo apparently had a loud fight with his wife that morning.”

That caught Lin Ronghu’s interest. “I was under the impression that he had a good relationship with his wife – as good as any man who can rattle off his three favorite brothels with explanations as to why they’re superior at a moment’s notice, anyway.”

“According to the servants, Madam Tang is usually indifferent to his carrying on; that’s why it was unusual that they had a fight. One for the ages, apparently – vases thrown, plates shattered, priceless paintings trampled on, that sort of thing.”

Lin Ronghu tapped the table again, thinking over what it could mean. “Tang Bo mentioned that he had a meeting that afternoon with a faction seeking to get his support.”

Jing Fengchu’s shoulders stiffened slightly: Tang Bo led his own faction at court, a group which Lin Ronghu personally termed the conservative snobs, so the only faction that would be reaching out to him was related to the fight for the throne. “Should you be mentioning that to me?” he asked, inadvertently confirming that if the outreach had been done on his behalf, he wasn’t aware of it.

“I don’t see why I can’t mention a relevant fact to the _detective_ that I’ve employed,” Lin Ronghu said pointedly. “Anyway, Tang Bo’s wife is a Fu, Fu Baoting, which means he’s already obligated to support Zhao Yi – ”

He didn’t mention Tang Bo’s willingness to consider other alternatives; that would really be allowing Jing Fengchu to fish in troubled waters – and he hadn’t even decided that he would be supporting Zhao Yan, anyway, regardless of how unreasonably fond he was of Jing Fengchu.

“ – so it’s theoretically possible the fight was her reaction to the overture. The timing is off, though: the meeting was in the afternoon, not the morning. If one is linked to the other, then someone has better information than I have.”

“Impossible,” Jing Fengchu said with admirable loyalty.

Lin Ronghu swatted at him. “Entirely possible: Tang Bo spends a great deal of time and effort trying to weed out my agents, but not so much for other people. Regardless, we will need to find out what the fight was about before we can speculate any further – none of your leads have anything to do with the Censorate.”

“That’s why I said I didn’t find as much as I would’ve liked. It’s theoretically possible that the identity of the victim was incidental, but if that’s the case, what reason would he have had to go there? Or, if he was lured over, who had enough authority to summon him?”

“Don’t forget that we’re not solving a murder,” Lin Ronghu reminded him. “We’re solving a _framing_. I’m expecting to receive the report on the condition of the corpse at some point tomorrow, but until then, we don’t even know if Yu Rulian was killed on the premises or if the body was dumped there later – he could have been killed by a random street thief, and someone realized it would be useful.”

Jing Fengchu frowned. “Smuggling a body through the streets? In that type of neighborhood?”

“It’s not impossible,” Lin Ronghu said. “Although I agree that it’s more plausible that he arrived alive.”

“I’m going to refrain from asking for too many details about transporting bodies through a well-lit, well-protected neighborhood full of rich people,” Jing Fengchu said. “Anyway – how do you plan to find out what Tang Bo and his wife were fighting about? None of the servants I spoke to had any information about it, and under the circumstances it’s unlikely that Madam Tang’s personal servants will come outside.”

Lin Ronghu smirked. “Why bother with the servants? Tomorrow, I’ll send a message asking for an audience with Madam Tang herself. How am I to maintain my dastardly reputation if I don’t make at least a token effort at seducing my nemesis’ wife while he’s unavailable?”

Jing Fengchu was surprised into a bark of laughter. “Well, we wouldn’t want you to get whitewashed by pretty words,” he said, his voice entirely too fond. “But why would she agree to see you of all people?”

“To try to get information out of me, of course. If you insist on being present for the interview, you’ll have to join me in the morning, after we speak with Jiang Ting – and _no_ , it would _not_ be more efficient for you to spend the night at my villa.”

Jing Fengchu shut his mouth with a click.

Lin Ronghu smirked, feeling for once victorious. “You did well,” he said casually, ignoring the beam of delight it got him. “Now go, and I’ll see you in the morning.”

Jing Fengchu didn’t so much as twitch.

“Is there something else you’d like to add…?”

“I merely assumed that there was something more on your side,” Jing Fengchu said. “Or else why would you abandon sleep and forget food?”

Lin Ronghu scowled at him. “I have work outside of this case, you know; there’s plenty more time to get sleep later. Go away.”

“You didn’t deny the bit about forgetting food. I’m getting you something to eat.”

“Jing Fengchu –!”


	5. Chapter 5

The next morning, Lin Ronghu woke up to the sound of shouting. This by itself wasn’t especially unusual – he _did_ live next to a fish market – but for once it seemed to be coming from inside his house, rather than drifting in through the window.

He blearily made his way out to the main room and found Jing Fengchu holding a box of grilled squid skewers in his hands, getting scolded by a furious You Hua for his trespass – whether into the house or her domain as the cook, Lin Ronghu wasn’t sure.

“Lin Ronghu!” he exclaimed, beaming and ignoring the indignant “ _Assistant Minister_!” from You Hua. “I brought you something to eat – you like seafood, right?”

“You’re a menace,” Lin Ronghu said, but he did take one of the skewers before retreating back to his room to change. When he re-emerged, You Hua had been chased away through some miracle, and Jing Fengchu was eating his skewers. “A menace _and_ a brat. Give me that.”

“Are we going to talk to Jiang Ting this morning?” Jing Fengchu asked, entirely unrepentant.

“No, I’ve decided to give up on this whole business of knowing things and retreat to the mountains to become a monk, where I can at least get some uninterrupted sleep,” Lin Ronghu said bitterly, gnawing at the remaining skewer. He had no idea how Jing Fengchu had managed to obtain them so early; the grilling stations were usually only set out around lunchtime, and Lin Ronghu almost always missed them because he was at work. “You’ll have no choice but to return to your previous life of dashingly solving crimes no one asked you to get involved with.”

“At least I’m dashing,” Jing Fengchu laughed. “Why didn’t I know you were this cute in the morning?”

Lin Ronghu tried to stab him with the skewer.

It didn’t take long to find Jiang Ting – he wasn’t telling stories today, so he was curled up in his tiny little stall writing letters for the illiterate migrant workers, each one sold for only a few pennies even though his calligraphy was good, fluid and graceful; he’d been taken in by his tutor for a few years after his family collapsed, and he’d made good use of the time.

Lin Ronghu held out his hand to keep Jing Fengchu quiet until Jiang Ting finished the current piece, mostly assurances to an elderly mother that her son was doing very well in the city by the looks of it. Once the piece was done, he carefully sprinkled sand on it, waited for the ink to dry, and handed it to the purchaser.

“Keep it somewhere dry while you’re saving up for the money to send it back to your home,” he instructed. “Now, who’s next – Assistant Minister! Detective!” He scrambled to his feet. “You’re – together?”

“Yes,” Jing Fengchu said at once.

“ _By coincidence_ ,” Lin Ronghu clarified. “Spare us a moment of your time.”

Jiang Ting left his stall to be watched over by some of the children who regularly attended his storytelling sessions – there was a glint in their eyes that suggested some serious selling was going to take place the second he was out of sight – and followed them to a somewhat more secluded corner.

“Is this about the story with the goats?” he asked Jing Fengchu, looking anxious. He was just turned fifteen and young for it, still halfway through his growth, limbs uneven and lanky, and it made him look particularly owlish when he was worried. “Because I tried to keep it as accurate as possible –”

“Not about that,” Jing Fengchu said quickly, and all of a sudden Lin Ronghu had a great need to hear this story in all of its particulars. Just because it would be disgraceful to his position as spymaster if he were the last to know, of course. “We just have a few questions for you.”

“Someone spotted you next to Tang Bo’s house two days ago,” Lin Ronghu said, regretfully postponing the subject. “Why were you there?”

Jiang Ting’s eyes went wide. “Definitely not committing a murder!”

Jing Fengchu badly disguised a laugh as a cough.

“We’re not accusing you of anything,” Lin Ronghu said a little helplessly. He was well aware that neither his reputation nor his stiff manner of speaking was conducive to coaxing witnesses; there was a reason he was a spymaster, not a spy. “I just wanted to ask you what business you had with Tang Bo before I had to ask someone else.”

Jiang Ting’s eyes somehow managed to get even wider. “You mean one of your agents? Do you have a _file_ on me? Could you have me killed?”

“First off, I have a file on _everyone_ , it’s nothing personal, and second, there’s no profit in having you killed – Jing Fengchu, if your contribution to this conversation is going to be making that intolerable hacking sound, you can do so elsewhere.”

“No,” Jing Fengchu wheezed, clearly winded from the effort of choking back laughter. “No, please. I actually can’t tell if you’re terrible or wonderful at this – he’s magnificent, isn’t he?”

This last part was directed at Jiang Ting, of all people, and Lin Ronghu was just about to intercede when Jiang Ting started _nodding_. Furiously nodding, no less.

He even looked sincere.

Lin Ronghu thought, not for the first time, that he had done well by choosing to be a spymaster rather than a teacher – adults he could understand, but children were an absolute mystery.

“…we’re getting away from the point,” he finally said. “Jing Fengchu, if you’re so good at this, why don’t you ask the questions?”

Jing Fengchu nodded, grinning. “Jiang Ting – Tang Bo. What’s your relationship?”

“He gives me money,” Jiang Ting said at once, which was just rude. Lin Ronghu had just asked him that very same question! “About once a month. He says it’s because he feels bad about what happened with my family, even though everybody knows he submitted dozens of memorials trying to stop it –”

“Seven is not ‘dozens’,” Lin Ronghu objected, only to have Jing Fengchu elbow him in the side.

“I thought at first that he was building up to ask me for something, so I make sure to save the silver he gave me,” Jiang Ting continued. “In case I needed to give it back. But it’s been a few years, and he hasn’t asked yet – do you think I’m safe using it for my brother’s school?”

Jing Fengchu and Jiang Ting both turned to Lin Ronghu, each one with an expectant expression.

He sighed. “Yes, you’re safe. Tang Bo has a history of disbursing charity to descendants of once-prominent families, and he won’t call in any favors until you’re powerful enough for it to matter. There’s no point in worrying about that now, though, and he’d hardly be able to retroactively demand the return of Jiang Ming’s education, so you may as well go ahead. Just don’t tell him things about me.”

“Never!”

Lin Ronghu blinked at the boy’s sudden enthusiasm.

“Did you see anything else while you were there?” Jing Fenchu asked. “Anything unusual?”

“No, it was the same as always – I went to the back gate at the start of xu hour, gave my name, and one of the servants brought me the pouch. Then I went home.”

“Make sure to vary your route home every time,” Lin Ronghu instructed. “And don’t show anyone that you have money, much less that there’s a routine time or place for it – consider walking by there at odd times of the month to better disguise the drop offs.”

Furious nodding.

“Xu hour,” Jing Fengchu said, then glanced at Lin Ronghu, who nodded to confirm that that was likely to be the time of the murder. “Did you see anything relating to the Censorate? Anyone wearing their sigil or any carriages…?”

“I wasn’t really paying attention,” Jiang Ting said, looking at little shamefaced. “I was behind on my composition practice, so I was doing it in my head. Anyway, there weren’t any carriages when I was there.”

“No?”

“Only the ones belonging to Tang Bo, I think? But I wasn’t really paying attention. I’m sorry!”

“It’s fine, don’t worry about it. You wouldn’t have known – really, stop looking so upset, it’s _fine._ You’ve been very helpful. Anyway, I think that’s all we have to ask, unless Jing Fengchu…? No? In that case, thank you, Jiang Ting; you can go,” Lin Ronghu said, still a little bemused by Jiang Ting’s eagerness to help out. He handed over a large piece of silver, which Jiang Ting dropped into his pocket at once – apparently his qualms about accepting Tang Bo’s money didn’t apply to Lin Ronghu, which made no sense at all – and stepped aside to let him return to his stall. “Oh, Jiang Ting?”

Jiang Ting turned back.

“If you write up the goat story and deliver it to Meng Rui, you’ll get another one of those.”

Jiang Ting grinned. “Of course!”

“Use cheap paper!” Lin Ronghu called after him, then shook his head and glanced at Jing Fengchu, who had a stupid grin on his face as well. “I’ll have someone check the bank he uses to confirm the payments, but I don’t see any reason to doubt him. Even if he was capable of murder, he isn’t capable of lying to our faces about it.”

“I agree,” Jing Fengchu said. “Interesting that there weren’t any carriages, though.”

“Mm, yes. That suggests that Yu Rulian walked there, which is not consistent with my understanding of the Imperial Censorate’s conception of its own dignity.”

Jing Fengchu nodded. “Which means he probably wasn’t there on official business. I’m more and more curious to know what it was that brought him to Tang Bo’s home.”

“Perhaps Madam Tang will have some insight for us,” Lin Ronghu said, turning back towards his villa. “She’s agreed to see us – well, me, but she won’t care who I bring.”

“Wait, now?”

“Why not? There’s no reason to wait. Assuming that it won’t damage your reputation to be seen riding in my carriage.”

“On the contrary, it will make me even more mysterious,” Jing Fengchu said, waving to a number of small heads peeping around the corner with large eyes, the result of which was a series of high-pitched squeaking sounds. “Also, if people start to think I’m one of your agents, they’ll direct all the complaints about respecting property rights to you and you can intimidate them into dropping the threatened lawsuits.”

“At last, I discover your secret motive,” Lin Ronghu said. “I feel used.”

“And yet, you’re smiling.”

Lin Ronghu shoved him into the carriage.

“Does this count as an abduction?” Jing Fengchu asked, sounding entirely too pleased with the idea. “Am I being harassed by my employer?”

Lin Ronghu rolled his eyes at him and pulled out a file to review, watching in amusement as Jing Fengchu’s shoulders slumped in exaggerated disappointment. He spent the rest of the ride loudly muttering about being robbed of the ambiguous atmosphere of a joint carriage ride by something so mundane and ridiculous as work while Lin Ronghu ignored him.

Shortly before they arrived, he put down the file. “Jing Fengchu. Stop whining and make yourself useful; tell me what questions we need to ask. I can handle the rest…She won’t appreciate being questioned by one of my employees.”

Fu Baoting was a beautiful woman, exquisitely dressed and made up with large eyes and a plump frame not unlike her husband’s robustness drawn in miniature, and it didn’t escape Lin Ronghu’s notice that her eyes were creased with rage rather than tears. She was very polite, inviting him to sit and have tea, and, as he’d expected, she didn’t so much as glance at the masked man standing a step behind Lin Ronghu – all for the best, given that she was first cousins to the Fifth Prince’s mother, Fu Xuefang, and more familiar than most with the five princes.

She managed to restrain herself through the process of serving tea, but the second it was cool enough for Lin Ronghu to put it to his lips, her patience ran out.

“What do you know about my husband?” she demanded.

Lin Ronghu finished his sip, unhurried; it was disgustingly fine, and very likely the exact same type Tang Bo had served him in prison the day before. “Over the years? Quite a great deal, often more than I’d like to know,” he quipped, and her glare intensified. “But assuming you mean in regard to his recent arrest, I can tell you that he remains unharmed.”

His visit to the prison yesterday had been fruitful in at least that aspect, resulting in the cultivation of a new agent among the Censorate guards. He hadn’t even intended on it – it was often underestimated how many of his agents were volunteers, motivated by his reputation for paying well and never turning his people in – but it certainly made things much more convenient.

Fu Baoting permitted herself a single exhale of relief, then returned to business. “For how long?”

“The Censorate has yet to reach any conclusions, other than squawking loudly about righting wrongs and not permitting injustice to spread. Their report to the Emperor suggests a political motive, but even they haven’t been able to come up with anything plausible yet – I’ve no doubt that they _will_ , given time, but there’s still some time before that window closes.” He took another sip, then added, “I assume your faction is already pulling whatever strings you can, up to and including petitioning the Empress, so I’m not sure why you feel the need to ask me.”

She scowled. “You contacted me!”

“And you agreed within hours,” Lin Ronghu said. “Which you wouldn’t do if you weren’t worried – and I want to know why you’re worried.”

“My husband –”

Lin Ronghu held up a hand. “Please, don’t insult my intelligence by insisting that you’re just a fragile housewife worried about the collapse of the family’s pillar. Why were you fighting with your husband the morning of the murder?”

Fu Baoting startled, her hands suddenly tightening into fists. She was just on the verge of telling him to get out, he could tell, but the full force of his terrible reputation aided him – she didn’t know how he knew what he did, or how much, or how he would use it, and she didn’t dare play games with him.

“It’s nothing,” she finally said. “A personal dispute – my husband has a mistress.”

“He has several,” Lin Ronghu said bluntly. “In addition to the ones he maintains, he has a number of favorite prostitutes at his best-liked brothels. That isn’t news, Madam Tang; not even to you.”

Fu Baoting’s mouth was pressed into a thin line. “I don’t mind any of that. Don’t you care more about the meetings he had later in the day?”

“No, and neither do you, given that you’re trying to trade information about them. The meetings he had were either innocuous or anonymous. What was the fight about?”

“I’m telling you, it was about his mistress –”

“Which one?” Jing Fengchu asked. His tone was bland and mild, but the casual tone of the question, from what she perceived to be a servant, was enough to get Fu Baoting to start letting out steam from the top of her head.

“Mei Ping!” she burst out. “A dancer from a red lantern boat, and not even a new one; she’s been through a dozen patrons before my husband, passed through hundreds of hands, and the bastard plans to bring her in as a wife? Not even a concubine?! It would be a slap in the face of my house, my name, my maternal family – !”

Jing Fengchu’s eyes went wide. Lin Ronghu didn’t disagree – it would be shocking if he believed it – but he was better at not display his reactions. “He denied it, I take it?”

“Of course he did. My husband is a _court official_ , Assistant Minister Lin.”

By which she meant that he wouldn’t admit to something if there was even the faintest hope of wiggling out of it, not even if he’d been caught with his pants down mid-act.

“What made you so sure he was planning a formal marriage, then? He wouldn’t be stupid enough to leave evidence in advance, not with how powerful your maternal family is,” Lin Ronghu pointed out. “If he was stupid enough to force the issue, he’d have gotten her through the door before you knew enough to complain.”

“I saw the eunuch with my own eyes,” she sniffed. “Going out the back door, early in the morning – he wore the livery of the harem. Why else would one of the Empresses’ toads be here, if not to negotiate a marriage?”

“The harem?” Jing Fengchu said, and Lin Ronghu stepped on his foot before he drew too much of Fu Baoting’s attention.

“You’re sure he was one of the Empress’s?” he asked. “If he was wearing harem livery, he could have belonged to any one in there.”

That was only technically true – while the eunuchs of the harem served all the Emperor’s wives and concubines, they could only be sent out of the palace by those with sufficient authority: the Empress, or one of the princes’ concubine mothers.

Or, of course, the one above them all.

“My honorable cousin-sister wouldn’t have bothered to send one like a sneak-thief in the night,” Fu Baoting said firmly. “And why would any of the others have bothered? Even if they were foolish enough to think that they could sway my husband, they would have reached out through intermediaries – family connections, personal connections. Only the Empress has nobody else!”

Tang Bo clearly hadn’t shared his philosophy on gambling with his wife, likely in the interest of maintaining domestic harmony. But she wasn’t wrong – and, more disturbing, Tang Bo hadn’t mentioned the eunuch’s visit, even with his reputation, his freedom, and possibly even his life on the line.

Lin Ronghu didn’t like the direction of his thoughts.

“When did you see him?” he asked instead. “The chen hour? Or si hour?”

“No, it was still the mao hour. Well before visiting hours.”

Lin Ronghu hummed. “Before waking hours, many would say. Why were you up and looking at the back gate at mao hour?”

She spluttered out some answer, claiming she’d gone out for a walk because of stomach pains, but Lin Ronghu’s mind was already elsewhere. He didn’t actually doubt her reasons; her response was exactly the sort of belated, panicked recollection that an innocent person suddenly accused went through, their mind abruptly reviewing a previously overlooked event for details.

“Enough,” he finally said. “That’s why you’re concerned, aren’t you? Now that this has happened, you think that you’re being schemed against.”

Fao Baoting pressed her lips tightly together. “I’m not sure what else it could be,” she said. “People like to throw rocks down a well – as _you_ of all people should know.”

Lin Ronghu pasted on a fake smile, acknowledging his (assumed) guilt, and excused himself after a few more rounds of increasingly subtle threats, Jing Fengchu a unnoticed shadow behind him. Once they were in the carriage, he held up a hand for silence, cutting off each of Jing Fengchu’s attempts to speak until they were very nearly at the Ministry offices.

He only relaxed once they passed the familiar gates, reaching up to tap the roof of the carriage to indicate that Rao Min should slow down.

“An interesting twist,” Jing Fengchu finally commented as the carriage drew to a halt. “The involvement of someone in the harem will make this a bit trickier.”

Lin Ronghu twisted to stare at him. “A _bit trickier_?”

Jing Fengchu shrugged. “If it’s not impossible to smuggle a corpse through the well-lit streets of a rich neighborhood, it’s not impossible to investigate even there. I’m sure you have some agents there, and I can make my own way in –”

“Using those peerless martial arts of yours, I’m sure,” Lin Ronghu snapped. He knew perfectly well that that wasn’t what Jing Fengchu meant; as a prince, he was one of the few men entitled to visit the harem without a direct invitation, able to go and pay filial respects to the Empress or to his concubine mother. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t be watched, or that it wasn’t an executable offense for him to traipse to the palaces of the other concubines; there had been stories of princes executed for trespassing on their father’s territory for nearly as long as there had been a harem. “No. Absolutely not.”

He took a breath; released it. “Thank you for your services, detective, but I think the need for them is over.”

“What?” Jing Fengchu yelped, nearly stumbling down the steps of the carriage as he twisted to turn to face Lin Ronghu. His eyes were wide and shocked underneath his mask. “Why?”

A prince shouldn’t have the ability to look _hurt_ , Lin Ronghu thought bitterly; it should have been burned out of him years ago by the politics of the inner palace. Even if he did retain such human emotions, there was no point in exercising them over _Lin Ronghu_ , of all people – even a fool would know going in that it was impossible to expect someone as ruthless as him to continue playing along forever.

Lin Ronghu would be perfectly entitled to shove him the rest of the way out of the carriage and shut the door in his face.

He didn’t do that.

Instead, he caught him by the collar and pulled him halfway back inside.

“The only reason Tang Bo would have to meet a eunuch before dawn and then not mention it, not even to me, is if the eunuch was on official business,” he said into Jing Fengchu’s ear, his voice low and harsh; he didn’t want risk even Rao Min, who didn’t listen to anything, hearing this. “And _not_ for the Empress, or for any of the concubines. You said it yourself – who would have the authority to summon a member of the Censorate to go anywhere? Much less _on foot_?”

Jing Fengchu’s mouth twisted.

“The imperial palace _isn’t_ a game,” Lin Ronghu continued, trying to beat into Jing Fengchu’s head what his concubine mother and all his maternal family had never managed. “If you – you of all people, _more_ than others – are caught where you shouldn’t be, looking into things you shouldn’t know, you _will_ be executed, and anyone who helped you implicated. There are no exemptions here for rank or privilege. On the contrary, the higher the rank, the higher the suspicion.”

The Emperor’s massacre of his brothers happened only twelve years ago. Jing Fengchu had been young, but not so young that he would forget; Lin Ronghu had been there, he had helped it happen.

If it had happened before, it could happen again.

“Do you understand?” he said, releasing Jing Fengchu and sitting back. “It’s not funny anymore. You need to drop this.”

“But it doesn’t make sense,” Jing Fengchu said. His voice was low, determined – he wasn’t laughing, for once. Lin Ronghu had never seen him look this focused or intense before; it wasn’t an expression that the reserved Zhao Yan would wear, nor the cheerful Jing Fengchu. “There’s no reason for the Emperor to frame one of his own loyal ministers.”

“Not _one_ , no.” Lin Ronghu grimaced at the confusion on Jing Fengchu’s face. “Tang Bo and I are good enemies _because_ we’re enemies. Our factions balance each other at court: what I support, he will reject; what he champions, I oppose. This opposition allows the Emperor to select whichever approach he prefers on a given issue without being accused of being led around by the nose by a faction.”

Jing Fengchu suddenly reached out, his hands closing around one of Lin Ronghu’s. His palms were warm, a contrast to the cold caused by his own poor circulation. “You’re saying – if he feels he doesn’t need Tang Bo any longer, then it’s not long before he thinks you’re not necessary, either.”

“I’m a sight more necessary than Tang Bo, thank you,” Lin Ronghu said, his voice a touch dry. “Anyone as paranoid as our Emperor cannot do without an effective intelligence program; he might like Tang Bo more as a person, but I’m more useful. But even being useful has its limits.”

“If we can solve this murder, he won’t have any basis for removing Tang Bo,” Jing Fengchu argued. “And if he doesn’t remove Tang Bo, he can’t remove you – it would knock off the balance, put Tang Bo’s faction in the ascendancy, and he doesn’t want that.”

“You’re assuming he’s not the one who ordered it.”

“The alternative isn’t worth thinking about!” Jing Fengchu snapped, his fingers tightening. “No – don’t give me that look, I’m a detective, I _know_ you can’t solve cases by denying facts you don’t like. But it’s better to keep looking, to find a way out, than to give up in advance!”

“I didn’t say I was giving up the investigation,” Lin Ronghu said, and took advantage of Jing Fengchu’s surprise to pry his fingers loose from the other’s grip. “I fully intend to find out what happened, if I can. The only risk I’m not willing to take is _you._ ”

The princes were the ones the Emperor feared most. Any sign, even accidental, that they were acting against him, undermining him –

The consequences were beyond merely the catastrophic. They were _unacceptable_.

“But –”

“You forgot to ask about your wages, the first day,” Lin Ronghu said, and this time he did push Jing Fengchu the rest of the way out of the carriage. “Don’t worry, I’ll think of something fair and have it sent to you. But as far as you’re concerned, the investigation is over.”

“Lin Ronghu –”

The Ministry of Justice wasn’t Lin Ronghu’s territory for nothing. He raised a hand, and there were guards at hand at once, ready to escort out the guest harassing their Assistant Minister; Jing Fengchu had no choice but to shut his mouth. His entire face, as much as was visible under the mask, was bright red, clearly steaming mad.

Lin Ronghu leaned back the rest of the way in the carriage so he wouldn’t have to look at him. “Escort the detective out,” he ordered, and reached up to tap the carriage once again, indicating it could proceed. “If he needs anything else, he can consult Meng Rui through the usual channels.”

He didn’t look back.


	6. Chapter 6

Lin Ronghu always had something of a crow’s mouth. 

As he’d expected, even if the Emperor hadn’t commissioned the original act, it was impossible for him to spit out the tasty meat that had made its way to his mouth. The Censorate, originally slow and confused, somehow managed to turn up some evidence of a secret investigation for corruption that they claimed was Tang Bo’s motive for murder – it was a little murky exactly what Tang Bo was supposed to have done to merit such an investigation beyond some vague reference to Tang Bo’s extensive experience in foreign affairs, a dodge that very neatly brought out the specter of treason to intimidate anyone from asking too closely – and the machinery of justice began to contort itself to fit the Emperor’s will.

Even Lin Ronghu, as the Assistant Minister, could only do so much to slow it down, especially given that it would be rather impolitic of him to do so in any open manner.

Still, out of respect for an old enemy, he pulled a few strings, slow played a few things, convinced a few officials that weren’t connected to him in any way to submit anonymous memorials suggesting that haste would result in a miscarriage of justice.

A few days into that, Ren Shijin made one of his rare appearances in the office, blinking lazily and wandering around with an absent-minded air. “You’re doing a good job,” he said to one of the clerks, who was gaping at the seemingly lost old man with a short white beard and too much fat, who hadn’t been to visit his own Ministry in months. “Very good. Keep it up.”

He didn’t stop to say anything to Lin Ronghu directly, but that wasn’t necessary; Lin Ronghu cut off all of his meddling at once.

Frustratingly, the investigation wasn’t making any progress. The Emperor had better control over the Ministry than over Lin Ronghu’s organization – only nominally the same thing, although it generally involved the same people – but even his people could only bake bricks if they had clay.

They dug further into Yu Rulian’s life, but a dead man’s life was more difficult to uncover than the living – all they had were the papers in his office or the signs in his home, both of which had already been thoroughly trampled on by the Censorate and none of which seemed in any way relevant.

They checked the various Ministry staff, but all of them seemed thoroughly concerned by their master and patron’s fall from grace; none of them had received any unusual payments or made any unusual trips beyond what their work required of them.

They tried to follow up on the lead Fu Baoting had given them, but Tang Bo was now inaccessible and no one else had any means of identifying the eunuch in question. The palace list of which eunuchs went out and on what business didn’t have anything – hardly a surprise, given that secret missions weren’t recorded.

At the very least, Lin Ronghu was able to keep Jiang Ting out of the Censorate’s investigation through a few judicious bribes and threats.

He had Meng Rui send assurances on that subject to Jing Fengchu in the hopes that it would keep him from doing anything rash, but he received no response. His agents in the Third Prince’s household reported nothing amiss, other than his spending a great deal of time locked away in his study, but even that was fairly characteristic; pushing any further beyond that would reveal Lin Ronghu’s interest, and he was not willing to go that far.

His office remained stubbornly devoid of flowers.

Worse, he didn’t even get a chance to personally check up on Zhao Yan – the Emperor cancelled all audiences for several days, claiming a headache, and even after morning court was resumed, Lin Ronghu’s afternoon reporting sessions were often one-sided recitations to a stone-faced Emperor with no witnesses, when they weren’t abbreviated or cancelled entirely.

It seemed even the Emperor’s leather face could still blush.

Lin Ronghu didn’t call his imperial master out on his actions, merely added an additional segment on foreign affairs into his daily reports – the Emperor very nearly blanched when he did that the first time – and carried on with his business. It wasn’t as though he had made _no_ precautions against such a move, though it would be irritating to have to pull out his reserve cards now, not to mention disappointing.

After all, if he was forced into making a retreat, he would by necessity go alone, never to return to the capital or to see those that lived here again. In comparison with the value of his life, the loss should be negligible – his calculations had always assumed that it would be – and yet he found himself more reluctant than he expected to have to make such a sacrifice.

Well, as Jing Fengchu had said, there was no point in giving up before time was up. Lin Ronghu’s information network was a giant spider, waiting patiently for the flies to enter its nets; there was always the possibility that they had missed something, or that someone would slip up.

_Something_ would have to happen.

About a week after his visit to Tang Bo’s wife, something did – although it was not something Lin Ronghu would have ever expected.

He received an invitation to visit the inner palace.

A formal invitation, delivered by one of the harem’s eunuchs (surnamed Kang, an old veteran who didn’t so much as blink at Lin Ronghu); it suggested that if it would be convenient for Lin Ronghu to come for a cup of tea after his meeting with the Emperor, his presence would be welcome.

Lin Ronghu had received a million such invitations, from those both low and high, but none was quite the same as this one – because of who had sent it.

Xu Jia, the flower of the Xu military family: tall, elegant, and beautiful beyond telling, with a clever face that often smiled but hinted of unplumbed depths within her deep eyes. There had been numerous competitors for her hand, before her marriage, and sorrow throughout the country when it had been announced that she would become a prince’s concubine – and now, the Imperial Consort of an Emperor.

She was the mother of Zhao Yan, the Third Prince.

Jing Fengchu.

It wasn’t as though Lin Ronghu wasn’t _aware_ of Xu Jia – he might as well resign his post at once if he wasn’t aware of her; she was an exceptional Imperial Consort, skillfully managing her affairs within the harem, avoiding unnecessary fights with the other concubines and obtaining benefits for her maternal family – but due to certain fairly obvious reasons, they’d never exactly had a smooth relationship.

After all, Xu Jia, of all people, was aware of her son’s bizarre hobby and even more bizarre infatuation; she was equally aware that Lin Ronghu, who specialized in all sorts of blackmail, was also in the know on both of these subjects. Lin Ronghu had never dug into the matter, but he knew that she had made a number of efforts to dissuade Jing Fengchu from his detective nonsense, none successful – she’d even asked her maternal family to make their feelings on the subject known, exhorting him to be filial and avoid trouble, to reduce risk as they maneuvered and schemed on his behalf. At minimum, if he refused to give up his detective work, they asked that at minimum he behave a bit more reasonably and avoid the one person who could destroy everything with a word.

Despite it all, Jing Fengchu persisted.

Lin Ronghu had no idea why Xu Jia would suddenly extend an invitation. A veteran of the complex politics of the imperial harem, he could not believe she was so foolish as to think that Tang Bo’s troubles were to his benefit, as many in the imperial court so shortsightedly believed – even within his own faction, any number of idiots strutted around like peacocks, twitching their tails as if to say that their day of ultimate ascendance was near, when all he could see were troubled waters. Assuming that she had not suddenly become stupid, why reach out now?

The only possible conclusion: Jing Fengchu had done something.

Done something, said something – he might even be in trouble.

Lin Ronghu kept that afternoon’s report brief and to the point, and made his way to the imperial harem as soon as it was done; luckily, the Emperor had himself been halfway out the door, having promised his beloved Empress a lazy afternoon at the lake to take her mind off of all the tensions at court, and so hadn’t noticed Lin Ronghu’s urgency.

Xu Jia’s palace was beautifully decorated in a cool and refreshing style, neither too ostentatious nor too unassuming. Tea was already laid out in a small pavilion; both the tea and the porcelain it was served in was of the highest quality, which was either a sign of Xu Jia’s familial wealth or a deliberate attempt to flatter that was going to be completely wasted on him.

The lady herself was waiting, fanning herself lightly; there were only two maidservants by her side (the Song twins, personal servants who came to the palace with Xu Jia, very loyal), a shocking intimacy for two people who’d never actually interacted with each other, having barely even met outside of formal occasions.

“Imperial Consort Xu,” Lin Ronghu said, bowing. “I am honored by your invitation.”

“As am I by your presence, Assistant Minister Lin,” she said, putting the fan down. “I appreciate your…extremely rapid response. I admit, I thought you would still be at court at this hour, which obviously takes precedence over…social visits.”

Lin Ronghu had never despised small talk as much as he did at this moment, and he usually despised it a great deal.

“Especially since we’ve never had such a meeting before,” she added, her lovely features ever so slightly shaded with bemusement. It was a good look on her, as everything likely was, although Lin Ronghu found himself rather biased in favor of her son.

“Imperial Consort Xu,” he said with a sigh, settling down and resigning himself to tea. “I am, of course, your humble servant, but might I recommend a little less amazement at my presence? While I understand that the chance to win me over is dreadfully exciting, your comments go so far that anyone listening might think that we were trying to cover up an affair.”

Xu Jia’s eyebrows went up at that, initially surprised, and then she clearly processed the last few sentences and had to press her lips together to keep from smiling at the sheer absurdity of the idea – especially since they both knew, as others might not, that the only thing that connected them was her son’s extremely ardent crush.

“Perhaps,” she said, recovering quickly. “But that isn’t the case, and at any rate, no one is listening but my maidservants.”

“In that case, I’ll assume that you summoned me for the more usual reasons,” he said, warming his fingers on the teacup. The tea was splendid in exactly the way he most disliked, as he’d expected, but he didn’t have time to worry about that sort of thing. “Politics can be quite complex, full of twisted roots and interlocking parts.”

“Very much so,” she said. “Especially when interests run in parallel, separate streams flowing into the same river to end in the same place.”

“And yet the greatest of rivers will break out into thousands of tributaries as it nears the bay,” he said. “Nature cannot be trusted in such things; better to think of fellow travelers, walking for a time along the same road.”

“Travelers can have hidden motives,” Xu Jia replied, taking a sip of her own tea. “On a perilous road, it can be better to act alone than to risk a disappointment.”

“A single post cannot prop up a falling house,” Lin Ronghu said, officially out of patience. He could play the game of oblique talk as well as the next person at court, but he was in no mood to play games if Jing Fengchu had in fact gone off and done something stupid that could, even now, be putting his life at risk. “This is the imperial court, where there are daggers in every smile – if you weren’t going to trust me, you wouldn’t have invited me here to begin with. Is there any chance we could revert to the straightforward recklessness through which your Xu family won its military laurels?”

“…chances are good, I think,” she said. “Assuming that you’re here to help, rather than throw stones down a well.”

Lin Ronghu rolled his eyes and raised the teacup to his lips, then hastily putting it back down again when he smelled the contents. “Actually, I visit Imperial Consorts every day just for the mockery; you’ll find it’s one of my lesser known hobbies.”

Xu Jia smirked. Clearly the Third Prince’s sense of humor had some origin within her side of the family, no matter how much they regretted his actions.

“Understood,” she said. “Forgive my surprise, Assistant Minister. I’d been under the belief that it was purely one-sided harassment.”

Lin Ronghu choked. “Excuse me?”

Xu Jia looked a great deal like her son when she smirked, the warmth of good humor mitigating the irritating qualities of smugness. “You know, back when my Consort sisters and I all lived in the same inner courtyard, our children would share stories with each other. I still remember A-Yan running back to tell me all about the fox demon their imperial father had lured back to live in the forecourt, which, if I recall correctly, had a habit of devouring naughty children and replacing them with simulacra made of twigs and lost souls. The other princes were terrified by the stories, even the older two, but not him – no, he was only very excited by the idea of meeting you.”

“Children are ghouls,” Lin Ronghu said, long-suffering. The boy who would grow up to be Jing Fengchu – he wasn’t even able to pretend to be surprised. “I never saw him back then.”

“Well, you were busy,” she said, casual as if he’d been working on composing a poem or arranging flowers rather than applying his organizational skills to planning a massacre that would carve a bloody pathway to the throne. “And he was sneaky even then, you know. A natural-born menace – he learned to climb walls before he finished learning to walk. I have no doubt that he went to peep at you even then.”

Lin Ronghu was not going to smile at the thought of a small, round version of Jing Fengchu clambering up a tree to try to get a glimpse of the fearsome fox he’d heard about. He wasn’t. Definitely not.

“The other princes grew out of it, I think,” Xu Jia continued, her smile fading away. “Fear or fascination…you mentioned earlier that my Xu family is known for being both straightforward and reckless. As you know, A-Yan has both qualities in spades.”

“Is the scholar about to finish buying the donkey?” Lin Ronghu asked. “Because I’ve aged three hundred years and added three new tails to my collection just waiting for you to get to the point. Is he in trouble or isn’t he?”

Xu Jia grimaced. “He’s been tracking down one of the harem eunuchs –”

Of _course_ he had. Lin Ronghu’s warnings must have blown through his ears like the wind.

“– and, while I’m not exactly sure why, he developed the firm belief that one of the other Imperial Consorts is hiding something in relation to that eunuch in specific.”

That didn’t sound good, especially when combined with the comments about recklessness.

“What is he doing about it, then?” Lin Ronghu asked, taking a sip of the vile tea to calm his spirit and reduce the urge to find and strangle Jing Fengchu at once. “Climbing walls to peep into their gardens?”

He’d meant it as a joke, but Xu Jia’s expression of surprise, almost suspicion, suggests that Jing Fengch, that _idiot_ , was in fact doing exactly that.

“In the _imperial harem_?!” Lin Ronghu hissed, putting down the teacup with a harsh clink that, if it resulted in a crack, was probably worth more money than his father had made in his entire life. “Does he _want_ to be executed? There are faster and more pleasant ways to die!”

“The Emperor and the majority of consorts are taking a pleasure cruise on the lake,” Xu Jia said, a half-hearted protest in her son’s defense that was more automatic reflex than actual approval. “I was the only one who didn’t go, I pled a headache…he should be able to avoid being spotted, surely?”

Lin Ronghu was developing a headache of his own. “Please summon one of your servants for me.”

“Any one in particular?” Xu Jia asked. She’s a clever woman, hoping to take a goat in passing by figuring out who his agents in her household are, but she’s doomed to disappointment.

“Any will do,” he said, with a thin smile, and while she was still digesting that, he drafted a quick note with instructions, which he passes along to be passed along; it will be utterly incomprehensible to anyone but its recipient, and that’s exactly how he prefers it. “I can’t believe you _let him go_.”

“I’m not sure if you noticed, Assistant Minister, but my son is well past the age where I _let_ him do anything,” Xu Jia said. “He started ‘dressing up’ at _fifteen_.”

Lin Ronghu was oddly charmed by the fact that she referred to Jing Fengchu’s escapades, which involved solving numerous confounding crimes, including but not limited to multiple murders, serious thefts, and arson, as ‘dressing up’.

Unfortunately, after that point, they found themselves without anything to say – Xu Jia had achieved her goal of getting someone with the resources able to keep an eye on her son, but Lin Ronghu couldn’t leave until he’d received confirmation that Jing Fengchu was safely back in his own mother’s palace.

After a few long, agonizing moments, they both spoke at the same moment.

“What an excellent tea blend –”

“The weather is not quite seasonal –”

They both stopped.

After another few moments of silence, Lin Ronghu finally said, “I don’t suppose I can convince you to tell me a few more stories about your son’s childhood.”

“And give you more ammunition against him? No.”

More silence.

“If the Assistant Minister would like to comment on the current political situation –”

“No.”

Even more silence.

“…fish,” Lin Ronghu finally said, and Xu Jia looked at him as though he’d lost his mind. “What’s your favorite variety, and how do you like it prepared? I know you’re not a vegetarian.”

“Are you really proposing that we have _this_ conversation?”

“You’re welcome to suggest something better. Or, if you prefer, we could go back to sitting in silence.”

“…I enjoy braised carp.”

Food, that most neutral of subjects, was enough to carry them through the immediate awkwardness, eventually turning into a dissection of a recent banquet they had both been obligated to attend. The entertainment had been moderately awful, but the food had been delicious; Xu Jia speculated as to whether it was a question of budget allocation or bad taste, with Lin Ronghu confirming after a moment of recollection that it was the latter.

“– but why would you even _know_ something like that?” Xu Jia was asking, a fascinated expression on her face that was especially reminiscent of her son under his mask. “It couldn’t possibly be useful intelligence.”

“The vast majority of intelligence is utterly useless,” Lin Ronghu explained. “It only becomes helpful when you sift through it –”

There was a clap at the door, then one of the palace eunuchs (surnamed Qiao, one of Lin Ronghu’s agents, generally sensible despite his relative youth) rushed in, his smooth face belied by the quickness of his steps. He bowed and called out a greeting to them both, then hurried over to Lin Ronghu’s side to whisper in his ear.

Lin Ronghu listened to the content of the report, back steadily straightening as he did.

Xu Jia looked between them. “Bad news?”

“The Empress dropped her comb into the water,” Lin Ronghu said. “She was splashed a little when an overly enthusiastic servant dove in to get it for her, and now she’s cold; she’s asked someone to fetch her favorite shawl.”

“The one with the embroidered phoenixes?” Xu Jia said, the confusion on her face clearing up and making way for horror. “She’s always forgetting that in someone else’s room, leaving it behind after every visit – it could be in any of our palaces.”

And the Emperor, who doted on his Empress, wouldn’t hesitate to summon up the entire staff of palace eunuchs to search each and every one of the palaces to find it – including whichever one Jing Fengchu was currently risking his life to investigate.

Lin Ronghu stood up abruptly, then winced, waiting a moment until his head stopped spinning from the abrupt movement. “Imperial Consort, it was a pleasure,” he said, bowing to cover it up, and rapidly retreats from the room, heading straight towards the lake where the Emperor was entertaining himself, eunuch Qiao easily keeping pace with him.

“I need a boat,” Lin Ronghu told him, and eunuch Qiao stopped moving entirely, gaping in shock. “Stop gawking and _get me a boat_.”

The day was calm, the lake placid, and the available boats were insipid little rowboats, old and reliable. The lake itself was manmade and not especially large; the journey from the shore to the Emperor’s pleasure craft, anchored in the middle of the lake, would take no more than the time it took to burn a stick of incense.

It felt more like a shichen, and Lin Ronghu spent the entire time with white-knuckled fingers clutched onto the boat’s wooden seat, his head pounding and stomach threatening rebellion; there were even black spots dancing with bursts of light in his vision as his lungs joined in on his stomach’s mutiny. He thought, not for the first time, that life on a boat was not a life worth living, and also that he must have lost his mind to do something as stupid as all this.

“Lin Ronghu!” the Emperor shouted, voice breaking through the sweet strains of music that some musician was plucking. “That’s Lin Ronghu! Quick, get him up on the deck – someone get him some tea – no, some wine – and stop that music already! He wouldn’t have come himself if it weren’t urgent; he can’t abide water in any way.”

That wasn’t actually true, although it served Lin Ronghu’s purposes for people to think so; he was actually a fairly good swimmer, as any boy growing up in a water town had to be. It was _boats_ he couldn’t tolerate.

The steadier surface of the much larger pleasure craft helped a little, as did the wine someone helpfully poured down his throat, but there was still altogether too much moving about for Lin Ronghu’s purposes.

“No – no food,” he croaked when someone tried to offer him some trifling little delicacy. “It won’t stay down – Emperor, a moment of your time?”

The Emperor waved his hand and a corner was immediately cleared out, the Empress and the Imperial Consorts all hurrying away to the other side of the boat.

“What is it? What’s happened?” the Emperor demanded, white visible all around his irises.

“There’s a stockpile of black powder, the sort used for fireworks, under the official palace,” Lin Ronghu reported, face appropriately ashen and breath short. The effects of severe seasickness, in a man with poor lungs, were remarkably similar to that of severe panic in a normal person. “Beneath the main entrance hall – enough to cave in the floor – ”

The Emperor didn’t need to hear more, which was good because Lin Ronghu was seriously considering emptying the contents of his stomach over the railing. “Call the guards, the palace eunuchs, the servants,” he demanded, his voice ringing. “I want this found immediately – disregard all other tasks, this takes priority. At once!”

Lin Ronghu refused any more wine – the Emperor’s attention had been squarely on him before, making poisoning him a terrible idea, but that was no longer true, and his willingness to consume things that other people offered was accordingly reduced – and stumbled over to the side.

“I’ll assist,” he said, meaning _get me off this boat_.

“Your attention is better spent finding those responsible for this attack upon Us,” the Emperor said firmly, meaning _someone get him off this boat_. “You have Our thanks, which we will express once the crisis has been resolved.”

Lin Ronghu waved a hand and got back on the rowboat to endure the journey back to shore. He spent a few moments simply sitting on the dock to regain his bearings as the rest of the palace turned into a pot of porridge, stirred up from everyone running around the main palace with shouts of excitement.

After a while, Lin Ronghu got himself back on his feet and made his way back inside, his feet still unsteady; he was only a little way inside when his stomach gave one last jerk of protest and he staggered, someone stepping forward to catch him.

He looked up.

The Third Prince, Zhao Yan, looked down at him, bright eyes filled with concern and face more effectively masked by royal reserve than by copper. “Assistant Minister Lin,” he greeted.

“Third Prince,” Lin Ronghu returned.

“You seem unwell. Can I escort you somewhere to sit a while?”

“No, no, I couldn’t trouble you –” He glared as pointedly as he could. “– a servant will do just fine.”

“I insist,” Jing Fengchu said, and bullied him into a chair he produced from nowhere in particular, the perfect image of a prince seeking to take advantage of an official’s moment of weakness to try to win some merit and plant seeds of influence. Anyone looking at them wouldn’t bother to look twice, other than noting that the Third Prince was making the expected play for Lin Ronghu’s resources.

“That was a debacle,” Lin Ronghu said the second he’d confirmed that the walls had no ears in the corner Jing Fengchu had found for them. “You had _better_ have found something to make it worthwhile.”

“It was. Are you all right? I can’t believe you went on a boat for me, you hate boats – you look _terrible_.”

“I’m happy to hear you finally admit it,” Lin Ronghu said dryly.

“Your face is green, not ugly,” Jing Fengchu shot back. His hands were clenched on the back of the chair, nearly as white-knuckled as Lin Ronghu’s had been on the boat. “How are you this bad with water? Aren’t you from a water town? No, don’t answer that. _Why_ did you – no, not that one either. More important: aren’t you worried the Emperor will lose his temper when he finds out you lied?”

Lin Ronghu smiled thinly. “Who said I lied?”

Jing Fengchu stared at him, his hands going lax on the chair once he was effectively distracted from his little bout of panic. “Wait. There’s _actually_ a pile of black powder under the palace’s receiving hall?”

Lin Ronghu nodded.

“That’s – really good timing,” he said, bemused; as Lin Ronghu had suspected, the expression – nose scrunched up, brow wrinkled – was even more charming on Jing Fengchu than it was on his mother. He looked like a falcon chick being unhooded for the first time, unable to fathom where the sudden daylight was coming from. “Exceptionally – no, _unbelievably_ good.”

“Not really,” Lin Ronghu said, finally taking pity on him. “I always keep a few urgent matters in my pocket for an emergency.”

Jing Fengchu fell silent for a moment. Then, lips starting to twitch, he said, very politely, “Assistant Minister Lin, how _long_ has there been a pile of black powder under the main receiving hall in the palace?”

“Only a few weeks or so,” Lin Ronghu said, aiming for a breezy tone but mostly coming off as smug, but in his defense he thought it’d been a rather good one. “Maybe a month? Don’t give me that look, I made sure it was inert when I first discovered it – the most straightforward chemistry, the children I used to tutor could have done it. I already know who the perpetrators are, and I’ve sent word to Meng Rui; I’ll let the Emperor know tomorrow that we’ve got them, and then he’ll give me a nice reward and permission to go scour the earth for anyone else who might be involved. All very convenient.”

“Why does anyone believe anything you say?” Jing Fengchu asked, pinching his mouth together to hide his smile. If he’d been wearing his mask, he wouldn’t have bothered to conceal it at all. “Ever?”

“The truth isn’t any less the truth because its delivery is delayed by a few weeks,” Lin Ronghu said dismissively. “Now tell me what you found, and let me be clear, when I say worth it, I mean _worth it_. I don’t have an endless supply of cards to play.”

“And you used one up for me,” Jing Fengchu said, sounding so unbearably happy that Lin Ronghu somehow found himself without the desire to strangle him, even though he _still_ wasn’t sharing what he’d found. “Anyway, before you start thinking of how to cover up my murder –”

One really couldn’t say Jing Fengchu didn’t know who he was dealing with. Bizarre, given that he continued to persist in his ridiculous crush.

“– I think I found something very promising. A good lead. But…I’m not telling you.”

Lin Ronghu’s expectant expression changed to a glare.

“ _Unless_ you agree to let me back on the case,” Jing Fengchu hurriedly clarified. “I understand the risks –”

“You very clearly do not.”

“Fine. Understanding or not, I’m willing to _take_ the risks, which means that the only way you can keep me from doing more stupid stunts is to let me investigate with you.”

Lin Ronghu didn’t especially want to admit it, but the twisted logic inherent in that statement was rather tempting.

“What did you find?” he finally said, scowling when Jing Fengchu heard the implied permission and beamed.

“I found money – ah, ah, give me a moment, let me explain before you decide to bury me somewhere. Also, have I mentioned your eyes – no, you’re right, I’ll explain first. Anyway. Money.”

“Yes,” Lin Ronghu said, with great patience. “Money. I find it’s quite common, myself.”

“Not like this it isn’t. But let me begin at the start: people have been sending grave gifts for Yu Rulian to his parents’ house, paper money and such,” Jing Fengchu explained. Lin Ronghu, who had politely sent some as well, gave him a look to suggest he move on to the interesting part of the explanation. “I visited several times, and I noticed that almost all of them are still there – except one little paper house, very well designed, which had disappeared. Based on the frequency of my visits, it could only have been removed from the premises yesterday afternoon, around the same time that they received the gifts from the imperial harem. Those were delivered by a set of harem eunuchs, and I believe that one of them is the one Fu Baoting saw.”

“Based on?”

“Far, far too many interviews,” Jing Fengchu said, pulling a face. “Mostly to narrow down which ones were confirmed to be elsewhere at the relevant time. Anyway, I asked Yu Rulian’s parents about it, and they said they hadn’t moved any of the grave gifts, which meant that someone else did – but why would someone bother hiding a little paper house, full of paper money?”

“They had an aesthetic disagreement with it.”

“They – what? _No_. Be quiet.”

Lin Ronghu smirked. “Stop laughing, keep explaining.”

“Stop being funny, then,” Jing Fengchu said, injured. “Anyway, that’s what I was looking for in the consort’s palaces – and the Empress, too – and sure enough, I found it, sitting in a corner of one of the consort’s palaces, waiting to be thrown out.”

“Which consort’s palace?” Lin Ronghu asked.

“Deng Xiacui.” That was the Second Prince’s mother. She was not especially known for having strong aesthetic feelings about anything other than herself. “May I continue?”

Brat.

Lin Ronghu nodded.

“The person who sent the gift – it was really nice, too, intricately designed and painted, worth at least a full piece of silver at any shop – went by the name of Qiu Fenfei. I’ve never heard of him. Have you?”

Lin Ronghu frowned for a moment, rummaging through his mind. “…Qiu Tian,” he finally said. “Courtesy name Fenfei. A minor accounting clerk in the Ministry of Revenue –”

He stopped, his frown deepening, even as Jing Fengchu beamed triumphantly. “Let me guess,” he says. “He’s not rich.”

“No.”

“In other words, he wouldn’t be able to casually afford to waste a full piece of silver on someone he didn’t know,” Jing Fengchu concluded, smirk still playing around his lips. “And since our investigation hasn’t turned up _any_ connection between Yu Rulian and the Ministry of Revenue, that means we’ve missed something.”

He turned to Lin Ronghu with a smile that warmed his eyes. “Well? Shall we go find him?”


	7. Chapter 7

As an Assistant Minister, Lin Ronghu had the right to make an appointment to see any clerk in the imperial bureaucracy, regardless of whether they were in his own Ministry or not, and his reputation for being the Emperor’s ‘secret’ spymaster – secret in the sense that everyone knew but the Emperor refused to admit it – meant that nobody really questioned _why_ he might want, on extremely short notice, to make an appointment with a minor Revenue clerk.

“I still can’t believe you just – made an appointment,” Jing Fengchu, now more appropriately attired in a copper face mask and clothing that wouldn’t immediately reveal his rank to the entire populace, grumbled as they walked into one of the more distant corners of Ministry of Revenue. “You sent a card and everything.”

“Are you suggesting that I’d be better off with subterfuge?” Lin Ronghu asked as he signed his name in the logbook held out by the old gatekeeper (Tian Xu, a veteran bureaucrat who was more interested in sleeping than in gossip, rendering even bribes unnecessary). “On the contrary, you’ll find that trying to be sneaky takes significantly more time and energy than being direct. Always be direct, if possible.”

“I feel like that’s bad advice, coming from a spymaster.”

“Not at all. Don’t you see how much trouble we’re having with boring old Yu Rulian? The more straightforward and direct, the harder it is for my operation to find something; the more secrets, the easier. It’s almost always the effort of hiding the secrets that reveals them.”

Jing Fengchu thought about it and shrugged. “You have a point. If it weren’t for the paper house going missing, we wouldn’t be here.”

“‘Here’ may be another dead end,” Lin Ronghu reminded him.

“Optimism won’t kill you, you know,” Jing Fengchu said, and opened the door to what might very well be the smallest office in the entire Ministry, with a small quivering mouse of a man that could only be Qiu Fenfei doing his best to hide behind a teapot.

Qiu Fenfei was round of both face and eyes, rosy-cheeked in a way that made him seem younger than Jing Fengchu, although in fact he was several years older. It was plainly obvious from the way he stammered out a greeting, wide eyes taking up half of his face, that his cramped little office had never entertained anyone more senior than a deputy sub-minister, and even that was a grand occurrence, happening less than twice a season.

Lin Ronghu eventually took pity on him and held up his hand, cutting off his third attempt to go through the formal address. “There’s no need for formality – or tea,” he added, eyeing the man’s clearly much-used teapot and deciding on the spot to send him a new one in addition to whatever bribe he would need to pay; he might have low standards for tea, but they still existed. “We’re only here to ask a few questions.”

“O-of course, Assistant Minister. Anything I can do to help.”

“Please sit,” Jing Fengchu, who had not introduced himself, said politely, then quickly darted forward to guide Qiu Fenfei into his chair when he made as if to sit right on the floor where he was – not that there was much floor left in the office. Once an extra chair for Lin Ronghu had been added, there wasn’t even room to close the door, and there wasn’t a chair for Jing Fengchu at all; after guiding Qiu Fenfei down, he returned to stand at Lin Ronghu’s shoulder.

Feeling oddly as if he’d acquired a very capable concubine, Lin Ronghu coughed to clear his throat and said, “You will have heard that a member of the Imperial Censorate by the name of Yu Rulian has recently died.”

Qiu Fenfei nodded. His eyes were starting to show white around the edges.

“Did you know him?”

Qiu Fenfei shook his head, then thought better of it and nodded, then thought better of that second response and shook his head again. There was sweat on his forehead and he seemed to be on the very of expiring from sheer fright.

Lin Ronghu was aware of several ways of making people feel at ease, none especially effective in his hands; his role in such interviews was invariably the stick, not the carrot. It was most effective for someone else to play the other role.

Luckily, even without being cued, Jing Fengchu knew what to do. “Don’t worry,” he said, smiling warmly. “We’re really not here to make trouble – it really is just questions. And please, don’t worry about Assistant Minister Lin here. He doesn’t actually eat people alive, I swear.”

Lin Ronghu rolled his eyes, but Jing Fengchu’s nonsense seemed to be doing the trick: Qiu Fenfei ducked his head, face flushing, but his shoulders had come down from around his ears and he seemed less likely to collapse from sheer anxiety.

“Not unless they’ve done something wrong,” Lin Ronghu said, folding his fingers together and looking steadily at Qiu Fenfei. “You’re very afraid. Is there something you feel you should tell us?”

Qiu Fenfei quailed and closed his eyes, appearing to run through everything he’d ever done in his life. “I – don’t think so?” he finally hazarded. “I don’t – I’ve never – I don’t do _anything_.”

Based on the little Lin Ronghu could recall about Qiu Fenfei, that seemed about right. There was really nothing special about him. He’d gotten his position in the same manner as Yu Rulian, only his distant familial connection had been to the Ministry of Revenue and his scores in the imperial examination notably worse; the only other difference was that his background was even more ordinary, a small family immensely proud of finally having an official in the family.

“That’s fine,” Jing Fengchu said soothingly. “He’s just nervous because he’s never been questioned before; isn’t that right?”

Qiu Fenfei nodded, looking at Jing Fengchu with relief and gratitude.

“Don’t worry, it’s quite normal,” Jing Fengchu said genially. “We’re entirely used to it. You just have to answer the questions, and then we’ll go away…forgive me, I didn’t catch what you said earlier. You knew Yu Rulian, right?”

“We know that you do,” Lin Ronghu interjected before Qiu Fenfei could fall back to the whole nodding and head-shaking business. Even if they hadn’t had the evidence of the paper house, it was quite plain from his initial reaction that Qiu Fenfei was in fact familiar with him.

Qiu Fenfei’s face flushed red. “I – yes. I knew him. But not – not that well.”

“Do you often spend an entire silver on flowers for grave gifts you didn’t know that well?” Lin Ronghu asked dryly. “You must be more well-off than your finances say you are.”

Qiu Fenfei looked up abruptly. “I’m not taking bribes –”

“I wasn’t accusing you of taking bribes,” Lin Ronghu said. “And even if you did, that would only put you in very rich, emphasis on rich, company here. This is the imperial palace; if you aren’t up to speed on who you need to bribe, you’re already behind.”

That probably explained the horrifically small office, actually. Poor Qiu Fenfei probably still believed in the morality taught to him by his peasant parents, and never realized that things worked differently once his little sparrow self took to the air to become a phoenix in a single leap.

“Then – what…?”

“Why’d you spend so much to buy Yu Rulian a grave gift?” Jing Fengchu asked. “A paper house, money, clothes – you’re not family, are you?”

“No – no.”

“Then why?”

Qiu Fenfei’s eyes were flickering madly all over; there was something he didn’t want to share. “I just – felt bad for him,” he finally said, and Lin Ronghu didn’t have to have Jing Fengchu’s detective skills to know that it was a lie. “He – he wasn’t much older than me, and suddenly gone.”

“Sympathy buys a lot,” Jing Fengchu said, “but not usually an entire month of your parents’ rent. What was he to you, really?”

“I didn’t know him,” Qiu Fenfei said again. “We met a few times, that’s all.”

Jing Fengchu tried the question from a few different angles – tripping Qiu Fenfei up, making him contradict himself, offering sympathy, encouraging fellow-feeling – but nothing worked. It was as if the shy mouse had abruptly turned into a simple rock, capable of saying nothing other than the denials he had already espoused. Even when Lin Ronghu interjected himself into the conversation with threats, Qiu Fenfei merely quailed and cried out again and again that he didn’t know him, they’d only met a few times, he’d given the grave goods only because he’d felt bad…

“Is someone paying you for this?” Lin Ronghu asked, fascinated, and Qiu Fenfei stiffened with offense. “No, you already said you don’t take bribes – blackmail, then? Threats?”

“I really didn’t know him!” Qiu Fenfei insisted. “No one needs to blackmail me – what would be the point? I don’t _know_ anything. At all. About anything! All I ever do is sit here and compile reports on grain imports, make sure all the counts from all the local inspectors match up; barely anyone pays attention to it. Even if I didn’t do it, it’d take them a week to notice; it’s not like I’m in charge of the imports the capital actually relies on!”

That was the most he’d said all day, and he panted afterwards, bright red and clearly ashamed of his outburst.

He dragged a hand across his face. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t – I don’t yell, usually – it’s just –”

Jing Fengchu’s shoulders were fairly slumped, having already largely given up on finding anything from Qiu Fenfei; he nodded and opened his mouth to say something comforting.

Lin Ronghu held up a hand for silence.

They both looked at him when he didn’t follow up the gesture with any speech, but he ignored them; he’d stopped them so that he could have a moment to think without interruption.

A few moments earlier, when Qiu Fenfei had been shouting about his useless job, some small alarm had gone off in Lin Ronghu’s head. Not the sort he was most used to, the little spark of inspiration that meant that he’d found a useful fact; this type of alarm was older, and even more instinctive.

He’d sensed, for just a moment, danger.

Lin Ronghu trusted his instincts, having relied on them to get out of any number of sticky situations before; he trusted them now. But what had happened during that moment? What had he seen or heard at that time, that wasn’t before nor after?

There was nothing of interest in the small office, every inch of it within Lin Ronghu’s field of vision; it must have been something outside. The window could barely be called that, so it must have been something outside the door, still ajar – there’d been people walking by the whole time, clerks and accountants and servants, none paying any attention. Lin Ronghu had kept half an eye out for anyone a bit too interested in their discussion, but no one had lingered.

There had been a few outside at that moment. A small group of clerks, with the look of heading out to get some food, had been passing by at the time, and he got the impression that at least one of them had startled a bit at the shout. Probably nothing; if he’d been one of Qiu Fenfei’s colleagues, he would’ve been surprised at the man having some lungs on him –

That was it.

“Three people just walked by the door to this office,” Lin Ronghu said. “Two of them are counting clerks at the same level as little Master Qiu here – Hua Li, a recent hire from the last imperial examination, and Mo Fang, five years his senior, devoted to his wife and his first child born last year, no other notable traits.”

Qiu Fenfei blinked, clearly taken aback. “How – how did you know that?”

“His brain pulls up facts about everyone that passes by,” Jing Fengchu put in, looking remarkably smug about an ability that wasn’t even his own. “It’s tremendous. I don’t even know why he bothers with paper.”

“People trust things that are written down, and anyway I’m a scholar; we live to write, not the other way around,” Lin Ronghu said. “Putting that aside, what should worry you is that I only described two of the three – I haven’t the slightest idea who the third one is at all.”

“What?” Jing Fengchu said, abruptly concerned; he knew exactly how efficient Lin Ronghu’s mental directory was.

Qiu Fenfei, who didn’t, frowned as well. “It must be someone new, then,” he said, standing up, and before they could stop him went to the door to look. “Look it’s – huh. I don’t know who that is. I don’t think he works here –”

Jing Fengchu grabbed him and pulled him back away from the door.

“It seems I have to give this one to you,” he said to Lin Ronghu, who was rising to his feet. “Subterfuge does take longer than going directly – that must be one of their people.”

He meant the Deng family, of course, though he didn’t utter his suspicion out loud; the paper house had been found in Deng Xiaocui’s palace, and there was no reason to assume she was being framed.

“They shouldn’t have people I don’t know,” Lin Ronghu said, irritated; obviously he couldn’t know _everyone_ in the city, much less the country, but he prided himself on generally knowing the sorts of people generally used by those in power. Whether Deng Xiaocui herself, her son the Second Prince, or her Deng Family – they had a set of loyal servants, both those for above-board and underhanded purposes, and there was no reason for her to abandon the usual set of people she typically called on for something like this. “My organization should have caught –”

“Worry about that later,” Jing Fengchu said, pulling the door open and ushering Lin Ronghu and Qiu Fenfei out. “Right now, we need to go.”

“Go…? Why?” Qiu Fenfei said, only now starting to become alarmed. “Who are those people?”

“They’re probably here for you,” Lin Ronghu told him. “Someone connected you to Yu Rulian, the same way we did, and they’re certain you know whatever he did – the reason he was murdered.”

Qiu Fenfei went pale. “They think _I know_ – are you saying they’re coming here to murder me?”

“Very likely,” Jing Fengchu said, and then added, “Though we don’t yet know what it is that they’re trying so hard to cover up…stop gibbering and walk, Master Qiu. Did they recognize us, do you think?”

“They’re unlikely to have recognized me,” Lin Ronghu said. “No one ever seems to think I look bad enough to live up to my reputation. As for you, I suppose it’s dependent on how he feels about local legends about detectives. Let’s get out of here.”

“I’m famous, in my own way,” Jing Fengchu complained lightly as they made their way down the twisting hallways of the Ministry of Revenue at a rapid clip. “People recognize me. That’s what the mask is for.”

“Is it?” Lin Ronghu asked, hand fisted tightly on his chest as they moved. His lungs were already starting to complain – if they kept this pace up for too long, he would need to sit down or else suffer an attack. “And here I thought it was to keep certain inconvenient people from finding out what you were up to.”

Jing Fengchu didn’t give a snappy response, glancing at him in concern. “We’re going deeper into the Ministry, rather than out,” he said instead. “I don’t think we can count on getting to the carriage if they’re looking for us.”

“If I don’t come out in – in – in time, Rao Min will – take the carriage away for a while, then return,” Lin Ronghu said. They were going too fast, but he trusted Jing Fengchu; if he felt they needed to go at this pace, it was because they were being followed. “We can meet him at – at the south entrance.”

“That works,” Jing Fengchu said, and then in an abrupt motion pulled both of them into what appeared to be a records room, shutting the door behind them gently enough to make no sound.

A few moments later, rapid footsteps came by. A voice, unfamiliar, hissed out a curse. “Which way..?”

Not long after, the footsteps receded, going the other direction.

Lin Ronghu was panting, and Qiu Fenfei forgot his own terror long enough to bring him the room’s sole chair. “Assistant Minister, your lips…”

“Are blue, yes, I’m aware,” he said, already starting to recover now that he was sitting down again. “Mentioning it doesn’t change it. Are you going to tell us what you know about Yu Rulian now, or would you prefer to see an actual blade at your throat first?”

Qiu Fenfei gaped at him, having clearly not expected to be attacked at this moment of vulnerability.

Jing Fengchu put his hand on his face and sighed, clearly despairing of Lin Ronghu’s interrogation skills, but the very next moment Qiu Fenfei shook his head a little and said, sounding miserable, “But I really don’t know anything. He never – he never told me anything, nothing that was odd or out of place. Only commonplace things.”

“But you knew him,” Lin Ronghu pressed.

“It wasn’t serious,” Qiu Fenfei said helplessly. “It was only fun, meaningless stuff – Yu Rulian was very clear about that.”

Lin Ronghu exchanged glances with Jing Fengchu, both of them abruptly enlightened. 

“You were lovers?” Jing Fengchu asked, his brow wrinkling in displeasure. Lin Ronghu agreed; his people had been over Yu Rulian’s life from tip to tail and had found no trace, not a single scrap of paper or keepsake, not even a casual reference dropped to someone else…Yu Rulian was either paranoid and discreet to the point of envy for any spy, or else so unsentimental as to not consider Qiu Fenfei part of his life at all, and Lin Ronghu didn’t see the former as being especially likely.

Sure enough, Qiu Fenfei’s head dropped a little, his lips twitching into a rueful smile. “Barely,” he said, more whisper than words. “He said – well. I wasn’t very adventurous. Or – or very…”

“Rich?” Lin Ronghu suggested. “Connected?”

“…yes. He was talking about getting married, you know. Someone’s daughter, in the Censorate. He didn’t say who; it wasn’t any of my business.”

Jing Fengchu’s expression was very eloquent: it was as if the words “what a scum” was written in large characters above his head.

Lin Ronghu couldn’t agree more. “Excuse my bluntness,” he said. “But it doesn’t seem – as though you got that much out of it, with him.”

“Oh, no!” Qiu Fenfei’s head jerked up, his eyes wide and round. “Quite the contrary! He was very smart, you know; he knew all sorts of mathematics, much better than me.”

Lin Ronghu’s highest qualifications as a scholar were in mathematics, but even he couldn’t quite see the relevance here.

“I got my position through the back door,” Qiu Fenfei explained softly. “Not even a proper family connection – a neighbor knew someone who’d done a favor for someone else…it wasn’t a very good connection. They were only just able to squeeze me in here, reviewing accounts for the grain from minor provinces, like I said. Still, it was a big thing for my parents, having a real official in the family, however unimportant; it means my sisters will be able to marry well, my brothers have a better chance…I have to do well. But…you see…”

Jing Fengchu was clearly still puzzled, but Lin Ronghu had been a teacher of students before he became a spymaster; he abruptly understood, recognizing that agonized and apologetic expression far too well, and wished that he hadn’t.

He barely suppressed a groan, putting his hand over his eyes. “He helped you with the math,” he said, not even bothering to make it a question. “So that you could complete your reports.”

Qiu Fenfei shrugged helplessly. “It was very nice of him?”

“It was _not_ ,” Lin Ronghu said firmly. “He excluded you from his life, kept you a secret, even told you his marriage wasn’t your business…he never put you first before anything. It wasn’t as if anyone would have even cared that he had a lover, male or otherwise! Three generations back, maybe, but these days? As long as you do your duty to your family and your work, no one cares if you cut your sleeve in your spare time – he couldn’t have made you happy, not like that.”

“What does being happy have to do with it?” Qiu Fenfei asked helplessly. “I told you –”

“Transactions are transactions, affection is affection. You wouldn’t have bought him such a detailed paper house if it wasn’t the latter, and affection values even misery as happiness. All things are transient; you should make sure that you have what happiness you can, when you can.”

Lin Ronghu could see that Qiu Fenfei didn’t understand – it was like talking to a wall again.

“Never mind,” he said, shaking his head. He’d bring it up again later, but they had more important things to focus on right now. “We’re in the records room – can you show me the recent reports he helped you with?”


	8. Chapter 8

“Do you really think there’s something in these reports?” Qiu Fenfei asked, staggering a little as he tried to peek around the boxes in his arms as he followed Jing Fengchu into Lin Ronghu’s villa. Lin Ronghu had loaded them both up as if they were donkeys, taking reports going back half a year at least in the event that Yu Rulian had been wise enough to take some time to think it over. “As the person who wrote them, I can tell you – they’re really boring. And I mean, _really_ boring. Even my supervisor can only bring himself to glance them over. Wouldn’t I have noticed that there was something interesting in there?”

“I doubt you would consider it interesting at first glance,” Lin Ronghu said, following him at a sedate pace. “Whatever it is, it’s probably something small, a minor discrepancy, designed to pass most people’s notice – something only someone doing the math to confirm the numbers might find, and even that only through luck.”

Lin Ronghu was a spymaster, not a spy; when it came to getting facts out of people, he was more than happy to defer to Jing Fengchu’s expertise. His own skill was primarily organizational – selecting the right people, setting them at the right tasks, and understanding the results they produced. Information poured through his hands like sand, sifting out the useless and irrelevant in favor of piecing together the few remaining traces into something important.

These days, he had an entire staff dedicated just to this filtration process; he would have teams of a dozen people reviewing a single matter – for especially important issues, the number could even balloon into the hundreds, each one assiduously searching for the needle in the ocean and, more often than not, eventually finding it.

If there was something here that Yu Rulian had found, something that had led him to his death, then his people would find it.

Qiu Fenfei looked excessively impressed, so Lin Ronghu added, “At any rate, my people have already looked at everything else and found nothing; you’re the only loose end left. If it’s not in here, it’s not anywhere – and someone, I can’t recall who, once told that I need to be more optimistic.”

“I think there will be something,” Jing Fengchu said, twisting his head back to make a face at Lin Ronghu. “Why else send someone to silence little Master Qiu?”

“Don’t say that,” Lin Ronghu said. “It’s true, but I need him to put the boxes down without falling over from terror.”

“I’m not going to fall over,” Qiu Fenfei said, even though his knees were visibly shaking again. “But…is it all right that I’m here? And not at work, I mean?”

“It’s quite common for the Ministries to requisition clerks at your level,” Lin Ronghu explained. “Quite often without requesting permission in advance; all that’s necessary is to get it approved by the Ministry of Personnel before the end of the year. And, I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but the Minister of Personnel is rather busy right now…”

“The end of the year?” Qiu Fenfei blinked. “But – my work –”

“Your new job is to assist me,” Lin Ronghu said, unwillingly charmed by the little idiot’s dedication; it reminded him of Jing Fengchu hot on the trail of clues. “If you do it well, I’ll find a post for you in my Ministry instead – there are places in the imperial bureaucracy with less math than the Ministry of Revenue, you know. We put more of a priority on having a trustworthy face.”

Qiu Fenfei’s mouth moved without noise, apparently thoroughly shocked by the notion that he might benefit out of this whole mess.

Jing Fengchu huffed a breath, even though he’d already put down the boxes. “Master Qiu, why don’t you go get something to steady you from the kitchen?” he suggested, nodding his head in the appropriate direction. Qiu Fenfei looked deeply relieved at the thought of no longer being in their presence, but had the presence of mind to bow deeply to both of them before scurrying off.

Lin Ronghu looked at Jing Fengchu sidelong, smirking at little at the thought that he might be eating vinegar.

“You’d better stay as well,” he remarked, purposefully not looking at the way Jing Fengchu lit up like a beacon. “The only way to ensure that the reports – and little Master Qiu – remain safe is to keep the doors tightly locked; that’s why I brought us here, instead of to the Ministry directly. It’s not that I don’t trust my people, of course…”

As a spymaster, Lin Ronghu knew better than most how hard it was to keep someone protected, even in a place he believed was safe. Not allowing anyone in or out, no matter who they were, was the best way to keep leaks to a minimum until he could confirm who could be relied upon.

“Of course, of course,” Jing Fengchu said, eyes shining. “It’s really just practical, letting me stay. Here. In your home. With you.”

“In a _guest room_ ,” Lin Ronghu stressed, but it was futile. “It _locks_.”

“If it makes you feel more comfortable, you should feel free to lock me in,” Jing Fengchu said, and now he was being _gallant_ ; Lin Ronghu glared. “In fact, I recommend it. Just keep me locked up as your personal prisoner.”

 _Not_ gallantry, then.

Lin Ronghu decided to ignore his nonsense.

“At any rate, we should send someone to the Ministry –” he started, already thinking of the next steps, when there’s a shout at the gate, someone demanding to be let in.

The guards were well trained and refused, but the person at the door didn’t listen, instead starting to shout – “A-Xun! A-Xun!”

Lin Ronghu started, badly. He hadn’t been called by his given name in years, not by anyone. The reminder of the past was unpleasant, a reminder that it _was_ past, the way his life had changed – besides, barely anyone in the capital bothered to remember that he’d been born with a given name, not even his enemies.

“Open up, let me see who it is,” he ordered, heading over at once, Jing Fengchu at his heels and poor confused Qiu Fenfei left behind with a wave of the hand. It was a risk, of course; opening the gate for one person created a gap for someone else to slip through, but – someone who knew enough to call him by not only his given name, but a diminutive?

There were very few people alive who would be daring enough to do that.

It turned out to be Meng Rui outside, red in the face and breathing hard, and that was even more a surprise. Meng Rui had long had strict instructions not to refer to Lin Ronghu in such an intimate manner: a distant relationship was socially acceptable, a countryman exploiting old favors to obtain position and power, but friendship would only be exploited against them both.

“What’s going on?” Jing Fengchu asked, looking between them. “What happened?”

“An excellent question,” Lin Ronghu said, utterly bemused and more than a little concerned. Meng Rui had been by his side for years; he should have known that being denied access meant that Lin Ronghu was trying to protect something, and that his arrival would have breached security – he wouldn’t have done it for nothing. “Has there been an order of execution issued for me? I assume nothing less would cause you such distress.”

Meng Rui huffed, still breathing hard. “I know that you’re joking,” he says, honest face so thoroughly distressed that Lin Ronghu was starting to worry that something had happened to his family. “But sometimes I wish you’d joke a little less – or at least have less of a crow’s mouth.”

Lin Ronghu frowned; Jing Fengchu’s eyes narrowed. “Are you saying –” he began.

“ _No_ , there’s no order of execution for the Assistant Minister. But there _has_ been one issued – for Tang Bo.”

“ _What_?” Jing Fengchu squawked. “Impossible. It’s too soon! The investigation – no one could have concluded an investigation so quickly, and an order of execution –”

“Someone’s pushing the Emperor,” Lin Ronghu concluded. “Whoever it is, they must know we have Qiu Fenfei – and that whatever information he has, it’s about much more than a murder. At least we have one advantage, which is that I doubt they know who ‘we’ are, or else they would have taken even more drastic measures.”

“An order of execution against Tang Bo _isn’t_ drastic?”

“Comparatively speaking, no,” Lin Ronghu said. “And anyway, it’s not a bad move.”

He could _feel_ how cold-blooded he was being from the way both Meng Rui and Jing Fengchu looked at him, but he couldn’t help it. He had always reacted to stress in this way: all emotion seeping out of him as though through a sieve, irretrievable, everything suddenly becoming as simple as characters written on a paper – abstract, meaningless, little more than a mathematical problem that could be solved.

He hadn’t known that about himself, back then, but that was no excuse, barely even an explanation. He’d been given a job and he’d done it well, too well, adding and subtracting human lives without the slightest hesitation to get the answer he’d been asked for; unfortunately, massacre was not one of the things in life for which there was a reward for exceeding expectations.

Meng Rui turned his face away, used to him by now, but Jing Fengchu only stood there, frowning. “What’s their mistake, then?” he asked. “They might have made a good move, but your moves are better.”

Lin Ronghu looked at him, a little surprised. He’d known, of course, that Jing Fengchu trusted him, but there was trust and then there was _faith_ – faith that even at his most bloodless, Lin Ronghu would have an answer, would know the right play to make, would fix everything, no matter the cost.

He was right, too.

“Their mistake – is that the Emperor hates making mistakes. They’re counting on the fact that quick execution will mean the immediate end of all investigation; even if something is uncovered, it will by necessity be buried alongside Tang Bo’s corpse to avoid undermining imperial righteousness,” Lin Ronghu said, turned on his heel to walk to his room. In his desk, there was a small, innocuous box, the sort used to sell tea bricks so cheap that they’d start coming apart on their own. “But the Emperor knows that, too, and his last bulwark against mistakes just happens to be –”

He smiled faintly and removed the object inside the box.

“– me.”

“I’m fairly sure that’s not supposed to be outside the palace,” Jing Fengchu said blankly. “Or – a safe. Possibly a buried treasure chest. Definitely not in a box of cheap tea.”

Meng Ruin nodded, his eyes round as the moon. “ _Definitely_ not. And – isn’t only Minister Ren was supposed to have the Ministry of Justice’s seal?”

“Even omniscience is insufficient to figure out the mystery that is Ren Shijin,” Lin Ronghu said dryly. “He gave it to me years ago. It’s almost never necessary, anyway; there hasn’t been an order of execution requiring sign-off from the Minister himself since the earliest days of the current regime.”

At that time, the seal had been all but soaked red from the many lives it had stamped out. Not in Lin Ronghu’s hands, of course, but at his order; he’d always suspected that that was one of the reasons the Emperor had given him the post he had, in addition to wanting him out of the way.

“Of course, it won’t last long,” Lin Ronghu said briskly. “Resisting for too long to do the Emperor’s will is a recipe for trouble for anyone. But I’m in his good books right now, given the black powder incident, and I’m well-known for my dislike of Tang Bo; if I refuse to process the execution order, he’ll be forced to wonder why, and that will make him slow down. He doesn’t want me to tear down his face in public again.”

“Only you would say ‘again’,” Jing Fengchu said, already starting to smile again, the shock of seeing the seal traditionally reserved for the highest orders of execution, things like the death of a royal or familial executions to the ninth degree, fading quickly. “Most people think my – that the Emperor is rather blood-thirsty, you know. They’re terrified of bothering him, much less crossing him; much less crossing him _again_.”

Lin Ronghu rolled his eyes. “If I was ever truly polite and subservient, the Emperor would accuse me of being possessed by demons. I didn’t decide to support him because our personalities were _suited_ to each other.”

“Oh, your impertinence drives him mad, paranoid and rigid as he is, but he’d regret it if it were gone.”

“I’d appreciate that, except for the fact that if it were gone, so too would I be,” Lin Ronghu said. “Meng Rui, take this to the Ministry and wave it in the face of anyone you need to in order to buy us some time – come up with any excuse you like as to why I’m unavailable, the more obviously transparently false, the better, but don’t let them know where I am. We’re on the right track now, I’m sure of it, and if we can find the person who committed the murder, the Emperor will have to stop the order…we’ll just have to go through Qiu Fenfei’s records ourselves.”

These days, Lin Ronghu had a staff to sift through documents for him, but building and training that staff had taken years of effort – at the start, it had been him alone. At that time, the Ministry could barely afford to pay the spies, much less their masters; Lin Ronghu had reviewed all the documents himself, staying up late to pour through each one to tear out the secrets within, and he’d never quite lost the knack for it.

It was rather incongruous, Lin Ronghu reflected, that at the critical moment they were sitting in his courtyard, sifting through reports that even the Ministry of Revenue barely considered important enough to read, when the world outside was consumed by a political storm. One could hardly tell that the sands of Tang Bo’s hourglass, as well as Lin Ronghu’s own, were swiftly running out – it was quiet, the midday sun warm with the books smelling faintly of dust, people on their own business passing by outside his door, and Jing Fengchu kept humming as he read, a ci poem about growing old in the country, seeing a person like moonlight, set to the tune it was composed against.

Lin Ronghu would prefer not to disturb such a pleasant scene, which is presumably why the next page he picked up to glance over was so disturbing that he immediately said, “Well, shit.”

Jing Fengchu managed not to laugh at him, barely. “What? Did you find something? A name?”

“What? No,” Lin Ronghu said, somehow distracted from what he previously would have said had absorbed his full attention. “What are you expecting here, a signed confession of illegal activity?”

“You never know! What did you find, then?”

Lin Ronghu grimaced. “I think I know what Yu Rulian found. I think I know what he did with it, and why it got him killed…I even know why our enemies are so desperate to quash this whole thing that they played what must be their most carefully held cards to get an order of execution against Tang Bo issued so quickly.”

“You’re magnificent,” Jing Fengchu said. “I see why they say you pluck secrets out of thin air; this isn’t anything like the sorts of investigations I do.”

Lin Ronghu rubbed his eyes, sore from all the reading, to avoid his automatic instinct to preen. He’d never had any vanity regarding his looks or even the intellect that had startled the court when he was younger, but the network he had built from nothing, the efficient abacus that divined what was hidden in the minds of men – even if this was only his own effort, rather than the team he now relied upon, it was a reflection of his legacy; he enjoyed seeing it appreciated.

“Yes, well,” he said. “Let me start at the beginning, which is tax fraud.”

“…I’m sorry?”

Lin Ronghu couldn’t help but smile at Jing Fengchu’s expression. “Qiu Fenfei is a low-level counting clerk; what were you expecting to be the opening salvo here? Just wait, we’ll get to the earth-shaking piece of it in a moment. Anyway – tax fraud. _Petty_ tax fraud, no less, even if it does involve the forging and submitting of fraudulent documents. Are you familiar with Jilin province?”

“I’ve…heard of it?”

“Yes, that’s about what I would’ve expected; it’s not especially important. It had an especially good harvest this year, well above their average yield. Typically, this would be a cause for rejoicing.”

“Except there’s tax fraud,” Jing Fengchu said. “For – a good year? Isn’t most fraud to cover bad years?”

“No, most fraud is to cover the skimming off the top, but yes, most _significant_ tax fraud is designed to hide bad years – administrators hate being the ones to deliver bad news, and take all sorts of measures to ensure that they don’t. A good harvest, in contrast, means that it’s easy to pay taxes, even to repay the debts of previous years – there’s no reason to hide it. No one hides good news from their superiors.”

“Then why?”

Lin Ronghu leaned back in his chair. “I’ll get there. Do you remember why the Jiang clan was executed?”

“Embezzlement,” Jing Fengchu said at once, though he was clearly puzzled by the change in subject. “They stole from the imperial palace –”

“No, not quite. Embezzlement was the charge, yes, and having checked the files the elders of the family were most assuredly guilty of that as well, but the key point is _what_ they embezzled. They might have gotten away without a family execution if they’d limited themselves to merely stealing gold.”

Jing Fengchu was clever; there was a reason Lin Ronghu liked him. He took one look at the useless little reports that useless little Qiu Fenfei put together in his useless little job, all of which dealt with rice, grain, and other staples. “They were stealing rice?”

“Not an uncommon habit; there’s always a black market, always a famine somewhere that drives people to pay outrageous prices. But for families in the capital, it’s nearly as taboo as the salt trade – there’s always the chance, however small, that the rice isn’t being hidden to sell to civilians, but to feed soldiers.”

“They were suspected of raising a rebel army – no wonder they were executed.”

“Those involved should have been, if only for sheer stupidity. But I agree with Tang Bo – never tell him that – that the execution of the remainder of the family was unnecessary and unduly punitive. The previous Emperor was nothing but harshness; he had no ability to discern between crimes. Everything was all the same to him, and always the worst possible conclusion.”

Jing Fengchu blinked, his long lashes brushing the edges of his copper mask that glittered in the light of the lanterns. “Is that why you joined the conspiracy to depose him?”

Lin Ronghu leaned over and rapped him on the fingers. “I joined a faction and became Assistant Minister of the Ministry of Justice within months of coming to the capital; even rich and powerful noblemen can’t get that sort of career, much less commoners from water towns in the middle of nowhere, with bad health, no looks, and no backing. There’s no reason to assume I did it for any reason other than having correctly identified the quickest route to power.”

Jing Fengchu smiled softly, looking as content as a bird that had found another perfect branch to add to their nest. “That wasn’t a no.”

Lin Ronghu rolled his eyes and decided to ignore him. “Someone is hoarding rice from Jilin province, possibly other places as well, and whether or not it’s going to a rebel army, they _know_ the Emperor will react badly to it. I found out about the tax fraud in Jilin through an informant, but it’s in these reports, too, and that’s where Yu Rulian saw it. I didn’t turn in the administrators because I wanted to turn them into agents; Yu Rulian, hungry for benefits, had the same thought, writ miniature.”

“He was blackmailing someone.”

“Yes, and they killed him for it. If he’d been as upright as the Censorate is always exhorting other officials to be, he would probably be alive today – too much public attention is the death knell for such schemes.” Lin Ronghu sighed. “They would have abandoned the operation at once, letting the Jilin administrators take the blame, probably convenient suicides out of guilt before they could be questioned. But he didn’t report it – and it’d be such a waste to lose all the hard work, time, and money that’s already been spent.”

He snorted. “Short-sighted. Whoever Yu Rulian found was responsible for this, the person he went to blackmail, should have just given him the money.”

“They probably figured he’d take the money and report them anyway,” Jing Fengchu said. “Even if they pointed fingers, the Censorate would never believe it of one of their own, not without proof.”

“And proof we still need, if we’re going to stop Tang Bo’s execution. Specifically, who is it that Yu Rulian decided was responsible for this? There’s nothing in Qiu Fenfei’s reports to indicate that – Yu Rulian must have figured it out on his own, and destroyed the evidence that led him to his killer.”

“It can’t be Tang Bo,” Jing Fengchu said. “Given what happened to the Jiang clan, and how he still feels guilty enough about it to this day to continue paying Jiang Ting – he’d never do that.”

“That’s a character assessment, not proof,” Lin Ronghu said. “One I agree with, of course, but if the goal is to get Tang Bo out of prison, we’re still at square one: we need to know who framed him.”

“And who killed Yu Rulian.”

“That too. It seems likely to be the same person.”

“Also, having a murderer on the loose is bad,” Jing Fengchu said with a grin. “Just as a matter of good governance and ethics, which I understand are fairly low on the priority list.”

Lin Ronghu rolled his eyes at him.

Jing Fengchu’s smile faded. “We keep saying ‘someone’ did it, but – we’re talking around the subject, aren’t we? The eunuch that took the paper house brought it to Deng Xiaocui, and he was seen around Tang Bo’s house, early in the morning before the murder happened. He was probably meeting someone there on her behalf. And if she’s involved…”

“Zhao De may be involved, or at least implicated by his maternal family, yes,” Lin Ronghu agreed. “That does make this all trickier; a prince advocating for a Minister’s death sentence isn’t the same as an official doing it.”

“We don’t yet know he’s involved in anything unforgivable,” Jing Fengchu insisted. “Deng Xiaocui’s eunuch is involved, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they are, and even if they are, it doesn’t mean they’re – raising an army, or anything like that. Even assuming it is them, the Deng family’s a military family; they have troops that they legitimately need to feed, and sometimes politics gets in the way of that. It may just be run-of-the-mill corruption.”

Lin Ronghu didn’t think that was extremely likely, but then again, it wasn’t his brother potentially being executed for his maternal family’s stupidity, assuming Zhao De wasn’t involved himself. If he was, that would be worse: he’d be trying to replicate his father’s path to the throne, and that path was watered by the blood of his fellow princes – Jing Fengchu included.

“There’s also another complication,” he said, instead of arguing the point. “You’re not wrong about the eunuch; merely belonging to Consort Deng isn’t enough to implicate her or her family. But if he was seen around Tang Bo’s house – what was he doing there? Who was he meeting?”

“We didn’t check anyone for connections to the Ministry of Revenue, or to Jilin province,” Jing Fengchu said, his eyes lighting up. “Assuming the location isn’t coincidental and it’s not one of the servants, both of which I highly doubt, and excluding the three secretaries for the reasons previously discussed, that leaves us with the three people from the Ministry of Personnel –”

“Assistant Minister!” someone shouted, the voice young and frantic and familiar – and utterly incongruous with Lin Ronghu’s order not to let anyone in through the gate.

Lin Ronghu twisted to look at the gate, but Jing Fengchu caught his sleeve; he turned back and followed Jing Fengchu’s gaze – upwards, of all implausible directions.

Jiang Ting was hanging off of the outside wall, feet scrabbling for purchase and eyes barely over the top. Lin Ronghu had no idea how he’d gotten up there in the first place.

“Jiang Ting…?”

“Assistant Minister!” the teenager said frantically. “They’re coming to kill you!”


	9. Chapter 9

“How did you even get up there?” Lin Ronghu asked, staring at his wall as Jing Fengchu precariously balanced on a table to get up high enough to pull Jiang Ting the rest of the way over.

“There’s trees right next to the wall that you can balance between,” Jiang Ting explained, looking a little wild-eyed from his little adventure. “Detective Jing told me about it.”

“… _did_ he, now?”

“I only did it once when you just moved in, I was fourteen, I regret everything,” Jing Fengchu said at once. “Don’t use me to fertilize your garden.”

“He _does_ that?” Jiang Ting asked, looking fascinated and also very clearly intending on including it in his next round of stories.

“The garden would be in a better state if I did, but I don’t have time to garden,” Lin Ronghu said, deciding to put aside Jing Fengchu’s childhood sins for the moment.

“Perhaps we should return to the main subject,” Jing Fengchu said quickly, sensing the reprieve. “Who’s coming to kill Lin Ronghu?”

“I don’t know who they are,” Jiang Ting said. “I was coming to see Assistant Minister Lin and I saw a bunch of men gathering up by your gate; they have swords and knives! They’re going to break in!”

“Were they wearing anything distinctive?” Jing Fengchu asked, his face serious, but Jiang Ting shook his head.

“Why were you coming to see me?” Lin Ronghu asked, more focused on that part of the story. “Did Meng Rui give you something to give to me again?”

“Yes, I went to give him the goat story, and he handed me some papers –”

“Is this really more important than the imminent invasion of your home or the attempt on your life?” Jing Fengchu asked irritably. “Jiang Ting, tell me more about the people outside. How many did you see? What types of weapons did they have?”

Lin Ronghu took the papers from Jiang Ting’s hand and tuned out the questioning. His house had only a few guards at the gate, not enough to withstand the smallest assault, and even if he wanted to protect himself that way, he also had to account for the traitors within; he’d wager that it was one of his less trustworthy servants that had slipped word of where he was located – probably You Hua, he’d known it was time to replace her.

It was the Censorate’s summary of the condition of the corpse, which he’d been expecting for a while now. It wasn’t that his people were falling down on the job, getting it to him this late; rather, the Censorate itself had refused to use the doctors that specialized in autopsies, presumably because they were all associated with the Ministry of Justice. Instead, they’d insisted on bringing in their own doctors, who lacked the training and messed the entire thing up, before finally conceding to reality and bringing in someone who knew what they were doing.

In fairness to the Censorate, the doctor they’d eventually brought in had in fact been one of Lin Ronghu’s agents, and that’s why he had a copy of the report so promptly. In the end, it just showed how much of a waste of time it was to try to keep Lin Ronghu out of something.

The report itself was fairly straightforward. The stabbing had been conducted with a straight blade, with relatively few details available; there was no way to tell if it’d been with a knife or just the tip of a sword. The body hadn’t had any marks on the hands, suggesting the attack had come as a surprise. The clothing he had worn had been recently stained by cheap tea, smelling of osmanthus...

“Jing Fengchu,” Lin Ronghu said, frowning down at the report. “Can you go ask Qiu Fenfei about what type of tea Yu Rulian preferred?”

“There’s a lot of shouting from the fish market,” Jing Fengchu said, which wasn’t at all what Lin Ronghu had asked. “From what I can tell, the men Jiang Ting saw are overturning carts, smashing things up, scaring people – presumably the idea will be to say that you tragically died in a riot. But those are all minor details, unimportant. By all means, let me know what’s the relevance of the tea?”

“My people searched Yu Rulian’s house and came back with a report on his life,” Lin Ronghu said, ignoring Jing Fengchu’s sarcasm. “He was very much a follower of Censorate fashions: same clothing, same events, same tea, although all usually the more inexpensive versions. But the tea he was drinking at the time of his death, however cheap, isn’t the sort the Censorate prefers.”

“He could have been served the tea by his killer,” Jing Fengchu said, finally interested. Lin Ronghu nodded: someone like Yu Rulian would never go visit an important minister in stained clothing, so the only explanation was that the stain had occurred later, during the visit – possibly even during the attack itself. “And if that’s the case…does that mean he might have been drugged?”

Lin Ronghu arched his eyebrows. “That’s a good thought. There’s no way to tell. If he had access to drugs, that would explain Tang Bo’s miraculous forgetfulness – anyone at his house could have slipped something into his wine as well.”

“You can find out what tea someone drank after they’re dead?” Jiang Ting whispered. “How?”

“Don’t you know already that Assistant Minister Lin can summon ghosts to ask them basic questions?” Jing Fengchu said without missing a beat before Lin Ronghu could respond.

“Don’t be ridiculous. The report is –” Almost certainly not something someone of Jiang Ting’s age and general impressionability needs to know, especially given the distaste of the general population on the subject of autopsies. “– something I got by questioning demons, not ghosts. Ghosts are your thing.”

Jing Fengchu nodded wisely. “That’s why we make such a good pair. You have demons, I have ghosts…wait a second. Lin Ronghu, did you say the tea he drank was cheap?”

“Yes. Obviously, that’s just a guess, given the circumstances, but apparently there were chunks –” Impressionable teenager, still watching. “Yes, indications suggest it was probably cheap.”

“Why would someone with the connections to get to Tang Bo’s house serve cheap tea?” Jing Fengchu asked. “The Ministry of Personnel are all snobs, as you’re always complaining – it’s hardly as if they’re all at Jiang Ting’s level.”

“And I definitely didn’t murder him,” Jiang Ting added, as if that was still a concern.

It wasn’t.

Lin Ronghu grimaced.

“What is it?” Jing Fengchu asked, scenting success like a bloodhound. “You know who it is?”

“It’s only a guess, not evidence,” Lin Ronghu warned. “I’d need to check his movements to confirm –”

“Your network can do that in the wink of an eye. Who is it?”

“That assumes I can _access_ my network. And as you’re bent on pointing out, there are a large group of men outside that –”

“Lin Ronghu, you’re killing me,” Jing Fengchu whined. “Tell me who did it!”

“…Zhang Fujing.”

“What?!” Jing Fengchu exclaimed. “The Assistant Minister? I thought you said – why would he frame his own master? You said it yourself; Assistant Minister Zhang is Tang Bo’s protégé! If Tang Bo goes down, he has no more backing. It’s – it’s stupid! Stupid and short-sighted.”

“Never bet against stupidity,” Lin Ronghu reminded him, then made a face. “It fits. I don’t like it, but it fits – Zhang Fujing is from an impoverished noble family, poor enough to develop the habit of drinking cheap tea, same as me. That’s why he became Tang Bo’s protégé; he didn’t have any other backing, any connections, nothing – only Tang Bo’s charity, the same sort he gives to Jiang Ting.”

“But I’m not going to work for Tang Bo,” Jiang Ting said at once.

“You don’t know that; you may not have other options –”

“Of course I do. I’m going to work for you.”

Lin Ronghu had nothing to say to that.

“That’s not relevant right now,” he finally said, getting back to the subject and also putting his hands over Jiang Ting’s too-curious ears. “Jing Fengchu – the reason Yu Rulian was killed because he’d discovered what someone was up to, someone with connections in the harem and capable of staging a riot right outside my door, and anyone powerful enough to do that would make very good backing for an ambitious official who’d reached the highest peak of what Tang Bo could do for him. They would have made him all sorts of guarantees, and it’s quite likely he wouldn’t have thought of it as interfering with his loyalty to Tang Bo. Only – it’s rather hard to conspire when living in someone else’s house.”

“Because the Ministry closed, and Tang Bo invited them all to live with him – the eunuch was there to see Assistant Minister Zhang, not Tang Bo. That’s why Tang Bo didn’t tell you about it!”

“Exactly. At any rate, Yu Rulian comes and threatens Zhang Fujing with exposure, inadvertently revealing that he’s the only one who knew what he knew. Zhang Fujing kills him, possibly in a panic – but he’s a member of the Censorate. His death will be investigated. What can he do? He could throw him out on the street to try make people think it was a street thief –”

“But then people would wonder why Yu Rulian came to visit Tang Bo,” Jing Fengchu finished. “And without any other leads, they would look into Yu Rulian’s history, but Yu Rulian had just figured out the conspiracy, and looking into his history means finding the same thread he did, the way we did. That’s dangerous – not just for Assistant Minister Zhang, but for all the rest of them. So – he doesn’t have a choice.”

“He does – a binary choice. He could reveal everything to Tang Bo and hope he’d help cover it up, but because Tang Bo disapproves of such things, that would mean he’d have to give up the benefits he was promised by the conspiracy. The only option left, therefore, was the riskier one: use the body to take Tang Bo down, giving the conspiracy an additional window to gain power through the political chaos caused by his demise.”

“But why would he…” Jing Fengchu trailed off.

“Why risk the nice, safe path of advancement through the official ladder for the radical risk of joining an extremely illegal enterprise that, if successful, might shoot up all the way to the top at once?” Lin Ronghu asked with a wry smile. “I can’t imagine why anyone would make _that_ sort of choice.”

Jing Fengchu coughed into his hand, but he was smiling. “Don’t think so highly of yourself,” he said. “You did all that, yes, but with someone you didn’t even like. Didn’t it ever occur to you that if you made him the Emperor, you’d have to deal with him all the time?”

Lin Ronghu ignored him. “Now that we know what we’re looking for, I can find evidence; if this is being run through Zhang Fujing, there will be traces of his presence in the files I have on Jilin province. I need to get to my office –”

“Which you can’t, because we’re under siege,” Jing Fengchu said. He glanced at the main gate, which had started shaking with the sound of fists and boots. “We have to defend ourselves here.”

“Don’t be absurd; we’re in the middle of the city. Someone will have summoned the city guard by now.”

“Is that what you’ve been counting on?” Jing Fengchu said, his face not looking good. “But Lin Ronghu – the head of the city guards –”

Deng Xuan, courtesy name Yanming; a generally effective, courteous man, but more importantly Zhao De’s maternal uncle, Deng Xiaocui’s brother.

“Shit,” Lin Ronghu said, succinctly. He took his hands away from Jiang Ting’s ears and pushed him to stand up. “Go inside and find a man by the name of Qiu Fenfei, then find a place to hide – somewhere that _isn’t_ the kitchen, and not somewhere known by any of my current servants. The men outside should let up on attacking the villa once I’ve left it behind, but it’s better to be safe…Jing Fengchu, I need your help to get across the wall.”

“Absolutely not. You can’t run – Lin Ronghu, you can barely _walk_ at a fast pace! They’ll kill you if you go outside!”

“I’ll make my way to my carriage –”

“There’s a _riot_. How will a carriage get past? It doesn’t make sense.”

Lin Ronghu crossed his arms. “I can’t stay. Find me a way to get past, or get out of my way.”

Jing Fengchu was quiet for a second. “Fine,” he finally said. “Fine. I’ll get you over the wall. But I’m coming with you.”

“What? No.”

“ _Yes_. Whatever danger there is out there, if you can face it, so can I.”

Not this again. “We’re not the same,” Lin Ronghu stressed. “You can’t forget who you are. If they find you out there, if they find out all of _this_ , Jing Fengchu, all of it, you’ll be under suspicion – better than that, you’ll be the perfect scapegoat! Your maternal family is a military lineage, too; Xu rather than Deng, but the same incentives apply, the same reasoning, it’ll be so easy to make you take to fall, you and your family –”

“Stop being such a pessimist. We’ll survive, disguises intact, and you’ll owe me favor; it’ll all balance out.”

“You don’t understand!” Lin Ronghu exclaimed, pushed beyond his limits. “I _have_ to go. They don’t need to kill me to win; once someone at the palace realizes that the riot is effectively keeping me penned in, all they need to do is bring me the seal and the order to sign, and I’ll have to sign it. Tang Bo will die, and there will be no _point_ in accusing Zhang Fujing because the deed will be done, the balance of political power will have irrevocably shifted, and at that point I won’t be any use to anybody –”

“You’ll be of use to _me_ ,” Jing Fengchu snapped, and stepped forward to grab Lin Ronghu by both shoulders. “You’ll…! Lin Ronghu, I know you don’t believe me, that you think I’m joking or that it’s – it’s some _crush_ that’ll pass in time or with age. It isn’t. I _mean_ it.”

“Jing Fengchu –”

“I do,” he insisted. His eyes were locked on Lin Ronghu’s own, intense and serious under his mask. The light-heartedness he permitted himself when he was Jing Fengchu fell away, it was Zhao Yan looking at him now, all of him together, the complete person. “Lin Ronghu, listen to me. I know as well as you do that we’re not suited, not by any means; there’s my father, my position, and you, you’re not…I know all of that, you don’t have to list it out for me. I don’t _care_. I’ll – I’ll put you _first_.”

Lin Ronghu stared at him.

“I’ll put you first,” he said softly. Jing Fengchu, Zhao Yan, the Third Prince; the entire world was his to inherit if he wanted it, that prize Lin Ronghu had helped his father carve a bloody path through his own family to win. “Everything you said about Yu Rulian, about Qiu Fenfei – I won’t do that. No matter who I am, now or in the future, you’ll be first. I won’t put you out of my life, I won’t keep you a secret, I won’t say anything isn’t your business – as if I even could, given what you do for a living. Transactions are transactions, affection is affection…this isn’t a transaction. All joking aside, this isn’t something I’ll do now so that you can do something for me later. I know that’s the way everything works in the imperial palace, but it’s not how I feel, not now, not for you. I’ll do anything, anything at all, just to make you happy. Do you understand? I don’t even need you to say anything back, to feel anything back, I just – tell me you understand.”

Lin Ronghu’s throat was very tight for some reason, but not at all the way it was when his lungs were giving out on him.

It had to be some strange breed of madness in the imperial family, he thought blankly. The Emperor had fought with his father for years over his choice in wives, insisting, always insisting; everyone had believed that Wu Yingmeng, another man’s concubine, had cost him his chance for the throne. They’d been together for years, but he’d only started planning the coup when she’d finally borne him a son – a son that would never have the chance for the throne his father had, not unless –

They were all mad. Every one of them.

And Jing Fengchu, despite all reason, was mad for _him_. Loved – _him_. Even though he knew exactly what he was like.

“I understand,” Lin Ronghu said, even though he very much didn’t.

“Good,” Jing Fengchu said simply. “Now let’s go.”

He dragged over an additional chair to balance on top of the table he’d used to get Jiang Ting down; the combination of the two of them together was enough for Lin Ronghu to get to the top of the wall. Jing Fengchu then kicked away the chair and hopped over the wall, landing lightly on his feet on the other side, and caught Lin Ronghu when he hopped down into his arms.

“We’re going to need to go fast,” Jing Fengchu warned, turning and leading the way into the streets full of yelling and loud noises. “Let me know if you stop being able to breathe – if we need to stop, we’ll stop; it’s better than you getting an attack and dying on the street. I won’t forgive you if you do that.”

“Well, I wouldn’t want to disappoint you,” Lin Ronghu said, aiming for a joking tone; he was pretty sure he hadn’t made it there, ending up at oddly earnest instead. “I do usually prefer to avoid death.” There, that was better.

They ran. Jing Fengchu knew the fish market well, taking twists and turns designed to avoid the main areas of fighting – and people were fighting now, mostly shopkeepers and shoppers alike grabbing sticks off the ground to lash out at the burly men causing trouble but also a fair number of people taking advantage of the chaos to settle old scores – and what Jing Fengchu didn’t know, Lin Ronghu could tell him. 

Well, as much as he could, anyway; he started to gasp for air after a few streets, especially once the air began to be smokey – apparently someone had set something on fire, which only made everyone panic even more than they were already – and after a few more he was coughing.

“Who _are_ these people, anyway?” Jing Fengchu asked, taking a peek out of an alleyway at where a group of them, identifiable by how dirty they were compared to the rest, were avidly searching through various houses, having presumably figured out by now that Lin Ronghu had taken to the streets. “They’re not army, by any means, but where else do you find a group of people willing to take up arms…?”

“Bandits,” Lin Ronghu said, taking the opportunity to lean against the wall and suck air into his lungs. He was starting to see black spots in his vision again. “Outskirts – Zhao De didn’t want to bother with – enforcing against them. Don’t you remember?”

For a moment, Jing Fengchu clearly didn’t, and then abruptly his face changed. “That stupid _lunch_? You think –”

“Doesn’t mean he’s involved,” Lin Ronghu clarified, hands on his aching chest, his body curled up as if he were trying to protect himself against a blow. “The points he raised – good ones. Any military family – write a memorial – the same way. And you know – he’ll take – any subject – if Zhao Ren is – on the other side.”

“Stop trying to talk, your lips are blue – and it’s not an exaggeration, this time, they really are,” Jing Fengchu said. “Also, if those really are _those_ bandits, I’m going to find a way to punch Zhao De about this. Or, better, get Zhao Ren to do it, he’ll hate that.”

“Zhao Jie – and Zhao Yi,” Lin Ronghu suggested. “They’ll make his – life miserable.”

“One day they’re going to learn not to pull pranks, and the entire palace will be a less interesting place…they’ve gone inside one of the houses. Come on, _now_!”

Lin Ronghu hadn’t selected a villa right next to his office for any number of reasons, many of which he was regretting at this moment, but it wasn’t that far away, either. They stopped a number of times, but he still felt like there was an iron vice around his chest, pressing in; air seemed increasingly hard to get no matter how much he breathed.

“Just two more turns,” Jing Fengchu said. “Then we’ll be at the Ministry gate; your people will have set up a defense there. Just two more turns.”

There was also a public square in between them and their goal – virtually every Ministry had one, a place for soldiers to stand in defense of the branches of the imperial palace, but extremely inconvenient if you were trying to make your way _to_ said branch.

Lin Ronghu couldn’t say anything about it, though; he could taste blood, though he wasn’t sure if he’d bitten his lips or if he’d started coughing something he shouldn’t. He’d lost the ability to speak some streets back; he was very near to an attack of breathlessness, from which he would require bowls of medicine to soothe his lungs and replenish yang and kidney qi. There was plenty of that stored at his office in the Ministry, if only he could get there.

He wasn’t sure they’d get there.

“It’ll be fine,” Jing Fengchu said, and Lin Ronghu almost believed him. “Just a little further…wait for it – go!”

It was no surprise that there was a dozen bandits waiting for them, swords and knives in hand, in the public square in front of the Ministry. Lin Ronghu had pushed himself a little too hard and had lost the energy to care, lifelessly tapping Jing Fengchu on the shoulder and staggering a few steps away to sit on the ground without any concern as to his face.

It made one of the bandits start laughing. “Well, this’ll be easy,” he said, beady eyes fixed on Lin Ronghu. “Look at him; it’s pathetic. We won’t even need to stab him – just run him around the square till his heart bursts.”

Lin Ronghu thought to himself that they were severely underestimating him: if the goal was to kill him either way, why would he give them the pleasure of running? A sword would be faster than asphyxiation.

Jing Fengchu’s hand fell on Lin Ronghu’s shoulders and he squatted by his side.

“Can you breathe?” he asked, and Lin Ronghu nodded even though it was a lie, blackness already taking up more than half his vision, because he’d promised not to disappoint him and anyway, they were _so close_. There was medicine in the Ministry that would stop even an attack. “Say something. Anything.”

Lin Ronghu’s vision was swimming: the bandits were laughing, Jing Fengchu was right above him, and everything below his neck and above his waist might as well be written off as a loss. He opened his mouth, trying to speak, something, anything –

Jing Fengchu jammed his fingers into one of Lin Ronghu’s acupoints, then a few others, following some sort of pattern, and suddenly Lin Ronghu could breathe again, coughing out phlegm and sucking in air.

He looked at Jing Fengchu. “Acupuncture?” he croaked.

Jing Fengchu grinned at him. “I got a tutor. You should see me with a set of needles…” He looked over at the bandits. “Do you think you could get across the square? Exclude the bandits from your analysis.”

Lin Ronghu considered, grimacing. Now that he’d resumed breathing, however temporarily, he could probably make it that far, though he’d probably collapse again the second he passed through the gate – again, excluding the bandits from the analysis.

“What – planning?” he demanded. It was probably something incredibly stupid.

“I’ll take care of them, and then you go in.”

It was exactly what he’d thought. “ _Stupid_.”

“Don’t worry, and trust me. Let me help you up –” The bandits were starting to approach them. “– good, yes. Now…go!”

Lin Ronghu went, hand on the wall to steady him for a moment before he staggered forward; his gaze was fixed on the gate ahead of him, which made it hard to see what else was happening.

Hard, but not impossible.

Especially when a bandit was sent _flying over his head_.

Lin Ronghu turned his head to stare, moving forward entirely on his momentum, but – no, he was moderately sure that it wasn’t a hallucination.

Jing Fengchu had disregarded all common sense and charged headfirst into the pile of bandits, an unorthodox approach that clearly surprised the bandits as much as it did Lin Ronghu, but what really surprised him was that they couldn’t seem to respond. He dodged their strikes, knocking aside knives and swords with his bare hands as if they were made of paper, punching and kicking them aside, throwing them over his hip so that they would crash against each other; even as additional bandits rushed out of the side alleys to help, it made no difference.

He made it look as easy as dancing.

At that point, head still turned back, Lin Ronghu staggered forward to the gate, which was pulled open at once, many pairs of hands all catching him as he fell and pulling him inside with worried cries of “Assistant Minister Lin!”

Someone had very considerately already started boiling the medicine, and Lin Ronghu choked down three bowls of the wretched stuff, chest finally starting to unlock and breath finally coming easier. Easy enough, that when Jing Fengchu showed up a little later – Lin Ronghu’s trek across the square had felt like it had taken forever, but in fact Jing Fengchu’s fight had probably only taken about two incense sticks’ worth of time – Lin Ronghu was reclining at his leisure in a chair by the gate, the majority of his staff already sent to look up the relevant information.

He looked up at him with arched eyebrows. “So,” he said dryly. “I’m guessing that these would be the peerless martial arts that I’ve been implying you don’t have for about five years now, then?”

Jing Fengchu looked utterly unrepentant. “I’ve never been anything other than perfectly clear about my advertising; I don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s not my fault that crimes in the capital city don’t usually require a showing of physical ability, except maybe for chasing.” He considered for a moment. “Or that thing with the goats.”

Lin Ronghu was going to find Meng Rui and demand Jiang Ting’s draft of the story as soon as humanly possible.

“Fine,” he said, feeling unduly charmed; Jing Fengchu was a menace. “Anything you want to tell me about your supposed ability to speak to ghosts?”

“Not a thing,” Jing Fengchu said cheerfully. “A man’s got to keep some secrets, you know. I wouldn’t want you to find me boring.”

“Somehow, I highly doubt that would happen.” He shook his head. “Thank you. Now go.”

“You’re banishing me already? ‘My journey is a long one, I say, the sun is setting all too soon –’”

“Your brilliant poetry in fact comes to no purpose, and I am not _banishing_ you,” Lin Ronghu said, rolling his eyes. “You need to get back to the palace before someone notices you’re missing and starts making inappropriate assumptions about where you’ve gone.”

“The palace? Why would I be missed there?” Jing Fengchu grinned. “Don’t you know, I’m just a simple detective. A _beautiful_ detective –”

“With peerless martial arts, yes, fine, I admit it. Please avoid giving our enemies a scapegoat before I have a chance to arrest at least one of them.”

“They won’t know I ever went out,” Jing Fengchu promised, and after his display in the square, Lin Ronghu was even inclined to believe him. This really explained a lot about why he’d been willing to invade the imperial harem, even if Lin Ronghu was still convinced that that had been a terrible idea. “One question before I go. All of this investigating – how are you going to explain..?”

Lin Ronghu smirked. “Now it’s your turn to trust me.”

By the time Lin Ronghu made it to the imperial palace a few shichen later, Meng Rui – who’d been defending himself from a great deal of angry officials with the seal – was pathetically relieved to see him, although it was very clear that he was the only one. Everyone else standing around and waiting for results simply gawked.

Lin Ronghu ignored them all, making his leisurely way into the Emperor’s current receiving hall. The main one was still under repair, the floor having been torn out to find the black powder; the current room was smaller, resulting in it being crowded by the glut of officials that had come to make their opinions known.

Seated at the center of the smaller but still sizeable room, the Emperor was very evidently steaming mad, a fact which all of the officials around him, civil or military, were clearly well aware; they were all talking at once, trying to offer guidance or good will.

It was not unlike an angry brooding hen surrounded by stupid cheeping chicks.

The chicks were divided, as always, into the factions: Tang Bo’s people seemed a bit dispirited, but not yet defeated, while Lin Ronghu’s own people seemed especially excited, and the rest of the groups – there were three other main ones, as well as any number of minor cliques – ranged between outright bloodthirstiness and extreme reluctance. None of these factions would line up neatly with the conspirators, since the still-forming factions behind the various princes were drawn from all over the spectrum, whether military or scholarly officials; it was a pity only in the sense that it would make it more inconvenient to eliminate them by the root.

Still, given time, Lin Ronghu had great confidence that he could do it.

He smiled faintly when the entire room burst out into whispers at the sight of him, excluding only the Emperor. He made his way forward without bothering to speed up and bowed. “Your Majesty.”

Before the Emperor said anything, one of the generals standing by (Pan Li, courtesy name Xinxiong; he was neither ally nor enemy, but he would benefit most in the short term if Tang Bo fell and was too short-sighted to think of anything beyond that) scoffed loudly. “At last, Assistant Minister Lin is gracious enough to join us. Are you done frolicking with your young lover, then?”

Lin Ronghu paused, then took a moment to glare sidelong at Meng Rui, who had an injured sort of expression that said, quite clearly, ‘ _you told me to tell them something!_ ’.

“Yes, all done, thank you,” he said with a sigh, suddenly more aware than before of his wet hair and clearly new clothing; he’d bathed to get rid of the dirt of the riots now finally being suppressed by the city guards, but he doubted this politically-minded group of gossips had even heard about them. “You know me, afternoon frolics are my preferred way to spend my free time. The heartier and more extensive the exercise, the better.”

The Emperor coughed.

Lin Ronghu couldn’t help but glance in his direction with slightly narrowed eyes – after spending several days in Jing Fengchu’s company, he was becoming increasingly familiar with that sort of laughter-smothering cough. Still, there was something to be said for age and experience; by the time he looked over, the Emperor’s face had return to bland smoothness.

“Let us set Assistant Minister Lin’s poorly fabricated excuses aside,” the Emperor said, because apparently the idea of Lin Ronghu having a sex life was too absurd to be considered, which he couldn’t help but think might be useful in the future. Not that he was currently contemplating having a sex life with anyone who the Emperor might care about, no matter what Jing Fengchu might think about it. “Assistant Minister, We assume you’ve come here without the order in hand for a reason.”

Lin Ronghu blinked exaggeratedly. “Order, your Majesty? I have, of course, returned to you all outstanding orders – disregarding the forgeries, of course.”

“Forgery?” Pan Xinxiong snapped, and he wasn’t the only one. “What are you talking about –”

The Emperor held up his hand. “If Assistant Minister Lin believes he has received a forgery, he should of course question it,” he said, although his eyes were very pointedly telling Lin Ronghu that he had better have something to back himself up this time. “What forgery did you receive?”

“An execution order for Minister Tang,” Lin Ronghu reported. “A truly ridiculous bit of overreach. After all, while this humble servant knows that he has recently excelled in serving his Emperor well, such compensation goes far beyond even my expectations.” He sighed dramatically. “If I were only so lucky that my just acts would be rewarded by the wanton destruction of my enemies..! But such a blessing should be given by the heavens to his Majesty alone.”

There was a distinct moment of silence as the Emperor visibly imagined strangling Lin Ronghu with his bare hands, a vein pulsing on his forehead, and the rest of the officials tried to collectively pretend they hadn’t heard any of that. At least three generals were covering their faces with fans or hands to avoid revealing smiles, and one of them was a Xu; it really did run in the family.

“Assistant Minister Lin,” the Emperor finally said. “Your objection to the order is that it is – too good to be true?”

“Yes, of course,” Lin Ronghu said. “Can you imagine my overwhelming joy if Minister Tang were no longer constantly appearing in my path, blocking my way? I would blanket the city with fireworks…ah, well; a dream must remain a dream. My people have already discovered who actually committed the act, and why, and they are even now on route to apprehend the culprit – why is everyone shouting all of a sudden?”

There was no use talking any further after that – everyone was talking all at once, a flurry of excitement. Tang Bo’s allies were suddenly bolstered from an unexpected direction, memorials they had drafted but never submitted were being pulled out of sleeves and pouches; his own faction, unhappy at this sudden reversal of fortune but firmly believing in Lin Ronghu’s cleverness, used the opportunity to extol his virtues and seek benefits; the remaining lot, divided between those like Pan Xinxiong who were sincerely disappointed and those who had only been opportunists looking for a tasty piece of meat, were all complaining.

The Emperor gave Lin Ronghu a look; he returned it, arching his eyebrow in silent question – _do you really think I would hesitate to ruin you if you try to ruin me? Are you ready for open war?_

Silence for a moment – and then, with a twist of the imperial lips into a begrudging grimace, Lin Ronghu knew that he’d won. Tang Bo would not be executed, and the power in the court would remain in the hands of the respective Ministries, not consolidated with the Emperor.

“– heard he got the information from a _bird_ ,” someone said, the words just barely audible under the general hubbub; if Lin Ronghu hadn’t been keeping an ear out for just that, he would have missed it.

“You mean one of his agents – ”

“No, a real bird; a wild crow landed on his shoulder in the garden and whispered in his ear – storyteller outside already passing around word –”

“– impossible!”

“– some foreign country; they have all sorts of experts there. Who knows where he got it from?”

“Even a street storyteller knows about it, why don’t you? So behind on the news…”

“–reputable source, I’m telling you; there’s some trick to it, I know someone who’s seen such things before. We’ll have to take extra precautions from now on…”

“We all should’ve guessed there’d some trick – who doesn’t know he’s a fox!”

Lin Ronghu was too disciplined to permit himself to smile, though he dearly wanted to: by the time the confusion had died down, and people stopped letting themselves be carried away by excitement, everyone would be far too embarrassed to ask about his sources – he never revealed them, anyway – for fear that he would say something ridiculous about birds, or, even worse, that it _wasn’t_ birds, and they’d have no face left after having conveyed something like that.

Settling the political issue took the rest of the day. Lin Ronghu didn’t bother to bring up the matter of the conspiracy in his explanation – he didn’t want to incite the Emperor to paranoia against his sons, especially not right now, when _certain_ of those sons didn’t have an explanation as to where he’d been during the relevant time – and he knew that those responsible, whether the Deng family or otherwise, would deny as slander anything he suggested.

It didn’t matter. Lin Ronghu planned to squeeze whatever he could out of Zhang Fujing, even though he probably didn’t know enough to make a dent, having likely been recruited through an intermediary, but in the end, he knew enough already to delay them, to make them need to change their original plans. He knew the direction of the threat and its likely shape; they would need to make further preparations, further adjustments, and that would give him time to find the rope that would hang them.

At some point during the officials’ debate, the Emperor summoned his sons to listen: the older two with thoughtful expressions, considering how this would change their strategies; the youngest two barely listening and spending the entire time gossiping, very probably about Lin Ronghu and the birds; and the middle son…

Lin Ronghu made a point of not checking.

It was already the early hours of the morning by the time Lin Ronghu got back to the Ministry. Despite it being the chou hour, almost all of his immediate subordinates were still there, circles under their eyes and smiles on their faces; if one had to work all night, resigned not to go home to see their families, it was better to do so when they’d already solved the puzzle at hand and the whole world was applauding them as geniuses.

Lin Ronghu even saw Meng Rui strolling through the rows, checking up on people’s work with a rescued Qiu Fenfei trotting along at his heels, the latter carrying things and beaming with excitement – more at the thought of working on something that wasn’t grain or mathematics than at the possibility of renumeration, if Lin Ronghu had guessed his character right.

He shook his head in amusement and went into his office.

There was a bright red camellia on his desk, gorgeous and lush; like others of its kind, it emitted no scent, but rather filled the air with a sense of freshness merely by its vibrant presence.

Lin Ronghu opened his mouth to call for Meng Rui – then paused, reaching out to trace one of the soft petals.

Well.

Maybe just this once.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Full cast names:
> 
> Lin Xun, courtesy name Ronghu - Xun meaning "springs", Ronghu meaning "glorious or luxuriant fox" (aka "fluffy fox") - 林灥 (courtesy name 荣狐)  
> Jing Fengchu - Fengchu meaning "fledgling phoenix" - 经凤雏; aka Zhao Yan, courtesy name Jingliang - Yan meaning "man of virtue and ability", Jingliang meaning "bright, glittering" - 赵彦 (courtesy name 晶亮)
> 
> Tang Bo, courtesy name Shanfeng - Bo meaning "plentiful knowledge", Shanfeng meaning "mountain peak" - 唐博 (courtesy name 山峰)  
> Jiang Ting, courtesy name Guangming - Ting meaning "thunderbolt", Guangming meaning "bright" - 江霆 (courtesy name 光明)  
> Meng Rui - Rui meaning "river bend" but having the same pronunciation as the word meaning "sharp or acute" - 蒙汭  
> Yu Han, courtesy name Rulian - Han meaning "vast", Rulian meaning "merciful" - 喻瀚 (courtesy name 如怜)  
> Qiu Tian, courtesy name Fenfei - Tian meaning "tranquil", Fenfei meaning "fluttering wings" - 秋恬 (courtesy name 奋飞)  
> Zhang Qi, courtesy name Fujing - Qi meaning "river", Fujing meaning "abundant landscape" - 张淇 (courtesy name 富景)  
> Xu Jia - Jia meaning "stem of a lotus" - 许茄  
> Fu Baoting - Baoting meaning "graceful treasure" - 富宝婷  
> Zhao Ren, courtesy name Yongci - Ren meaning "benevolence", Yongci meaning "heroic benevolence" - 赵仁 (courtesy name 勇慈)  
> Zhao De, courtesy name Luping - De meaning "virtue", Luping meaning "smooth path" - 赵德 (courtesy name 路平)  
> Zhao Jie, courtesy name Runyi - Jie meaning "outstanding", Runyi meaning "beneficence, beneficial view" - 赵杰 (courtesy name 润仪)  
> Zhao Yi, courtesy name Youji - Yi meaning resolute, Youji meaning "forgiving aid" - 赵毅 (courtesy name 宥济)


End file.
